Doctor Who Fan Fiction ❯ DOCTOR WHO: NEO KOSMOS (New World) ❯ SIRENS AND ECHOES IN TIME ( Chapter 2 )

Episode2

SIRENS AND ECHOES IN TIME

The Doctor learns about the paradoxes endangering the multiverse, and his part in it. The Sirens and the echoes in time; those who once helped us, and that which it helped us from. Long forgotten; but back again! Meanwhile, deep within another universe, events unfold that could bring about the end of time as we know it.

Prologue

Scene:

Narration: Music. Made form basic sounds you make everyday. In so many different ways. And enhancing them with sound made from the various instruments that attribute its form and existence. As somebody once dared to say, without music, life would be a mistake. Barring the melancholy and the obvious certainties of life, music expresses that which is improbable to put into words, and impossible to remain silent about. A refuge to the desolate. A creation of mankind, so mundane and yet so strong, even Holy and Godly presence were associated with it. For times eternal, life is for the living. Death is for the dead. And music was a cultural paradigm, elegant and strong enough to comment on both equally. A succession of notes, of well-formed sounds to some. To others, a world of its own!

Scene:

[1860. A changed version of Salzburg under the prevailing Holy Roman Empire. There are big citadels and towers all over the reign of the empire. The likes of which we have never know to be. Pomp and grandeur is in the air. Their are walled parks and stadiums, show-houses, brothels and broken arenas all around.

A farmhouse in one corner of the country. A child, Mozart, barely five years old, plays at his violin while his family and a group of elders praise him on.]

Scene:

Narration: Some, in the olden days, said that such a jolly and erratic succession of sound was the work of the Devil. A nuisance; deviating from your work and duty towards God and the Holy legions of spirits. But this did not take well with the creative mind of others. To them music was an engine of life itself. Some would even go on to say, music was a window to a whole other world. And this was no less true for one little boy in particular....

Scene:

[A little Mozart still playing his violin, while conversations around him start to sound less distinct and fade away. He gets too focused on the nature of sound itself. How it weaves together to form something so unique. So soothing. So peaceful. And yet,.. there was something unsettling. He could feel it. From the corner of his eyes, pressed hard and focused towards the music, he could sense lapses of irregularity. Amidst all the peace his music provided, he could hear something. Something calling and pulling at him. Some extent of uncanny and deliberate uncertainty.]

Scene:

Narration: From ages past, music has been of many types. Some so live like that the hoodlums of the Great seas would dance and be merry to, celebrating a plunder. Some so unique and uprising, so deep and multi-dimensional that newborn cultures have marked their beginning with such drumming beats and thuds. And some, captivating and soothing, like sirens of the sea, and yet unknown to those who hear it-

[A very quick flash of montages of time as we know it, and time yet to come. People and places. Places teeming with life..even life from other worlds! Humans, proto-humans, Doctors, Gallifreyans, Earthlings, New-Earthlings, Terraberserkers, Daleks, Sontarans, ..and Sirens. Now- Weeping Angels. And one of them ends the montage with its fangs out, reaching for grabs, while another with a perplexed stance and a sad stone face, hand a bit lowered form its face, behind it. And with a sudden rush, the fanged Angel rushes through!]

[Little Mozart suddenly opens his eyes! Unable to understand or recollect most of what he saw.

..And there is a soothing sound coming through in his mind. Sweeping in, even within all that fear and anguish and confusion around. Like a melody. One side of the blanket is a rhythm that sounded like a choir, sweet. With an angelic voice drawing near. On the other hand was an accompanying sound - rapid resonating waves that formed a pattern of beat, along with the choir. Like somebody strumming a small piece of nickel through the inner components, the bass strings and the dampers behind the keys of the piano. Making a slow beat reverbing itself into existence though time itself. Like a beacon. A beacon of the Sirens!]

[Cue Title Theme]

Scene 1:

[Meanwhile in the Limbo-

A Semi-spherical zoom in to the group and the Valeyard facing them. The Doctor and the companions are still in their Cyber-Conversion bindings, while the Valeyard operates his gauntlets from within two barley open gel-like pads, dark as the place itself, which leads back to the conversion units.]

Valeyard: Cheer up Doctor, we have work to do....

Doctor[struggles]: So tell me, Mega-Me. Why is it you think something in a far out universe endangers time and it needs saving? And what do you mean Time is alive. A while back I was told Time was a planet. Now it is alive?

[The Valeyard operates psychic traces in their minds, causing them bits of uneasiness and pain.]

[To us- holo-flashbacks of scenes]

Valeyard: The planet of Time is a cluster of rocks and a core - A planetoid redirected to form at the start of 'The' Time-event singularity, so that the flow of time passes through it, and around it. Like the first piece of land that gets the glazing shine of the revolving sun when it comes into view. Lands of Rising Binary Suns at Darillium XE552. Or Highlands in Skaro and the peak of the Citadel in Gallifrey. The singularity that is the first of everything. That caused the creation of everything around you. That initiated the system of living, and being and existing. The most extent of backwards the Guardians could afford to go to. They had to burn down constellations to facilitate their travel so far back. Once settled at the planet of Time, the group of the Guardian Priests were formed and made to look after it. The flow of time itself. Which they considered very much alive.

Doctor: And what do you mean by that? Tell me!

Valeyard: Time is not the information highway that supports the passing of data-packets and living psychic messages. It allows living time-beasts and jumpers and pompous fools traveling in capsules because it itself is alive. It is a correlation; a system of living.

Layla[struggles a little]: And where and why do we come in?

Valeyard: You do not! He, however, does. Time has saved you as much as you have saved time. Which is why time needs you alive. You have fought wars to safeguard Time itself, though you did not know about its initiations back then. Time needs you alive and healthy, because without the intervention of the 'Doctor', a lot could fall apart.

Doctor: What do you mean 'save me'? Saved me from who?

Valeyard: Ah, dangerous word, Doctor. You should know better[smirks].

Scene:

[He activates a button that starts a new series of psychic traces and images. The experience seems painful, but the Doctor listens intently.]

Valeyard: Saved you from Anti-Time. That is what the Planet of Time called it, supposedly. The build-up of paradoxes so great it can rip multiverses apart. The exact nature of Anti-Time is unknown. Is it an entity? Is it an occurrence, a space-time event? Nobody knows for sure. But everybody knows paradoxes can be dangerous. Yet there is so little we can avoid.

Doctor: Anti-time.

Valeyard: Why is it you think I do what I do?

Daniel: Because you are crazy? What more reason does someone as crazy as you possibly need?

[The Valeyard has manifested by his side again]

Valeyard: Oaf! I am not crazy. I am evil and I own it like I should. It is of my own making. Whatever I have done, Whatever I have been, is to ensure my survival.

Doctor: Why?

Valeyard: I have had to ensure a strong foothold of my existence. To ensure I have regeneration of my own. A strain of life, an existence of my own. I have had to amass power. Impossible and indestructible kinds of power. All in anticipation of the Anti-Time. It is one of the first visions I had in my Tardis when I became the Valeyard, in the High Sanctum. Followed by what I had to do.

Doctor: So the great Mega-Me has worked out of a place of fright all along?

Valeyard: As should you, Doctor. As should all of you.

[He activates a button, and a projection appears. A red and black version of the Time Vortex. Or something very similar in kind. But with massive chunks of irregularities. Ranging vast and wide. Originating and waving out from a single point of origin. So strong enough, that the wave-out of energy starts of from a point, then ranges out to a whole solar system, a whole star-cluster, galaxy and almost whole of Universe. There is a low humming along with it. And another different sound. A beeping of sorts.]

Valeyard: Do you hear it Doctor?

Doctor: I do. But...but why does it so seem familiar? And is that?

Valeyard: It is.

Doctor: A micro wave-form pulse! Is it a beacon?

Valeyard: I do not know.

Layla: You are Time Lords. Literal lords of time. Paradoxes should be like Lego to you people.

Valeyard: True. We are not primitive beings who would use foreknowledge to create, negate and again uncreate our own futures. Like a person so stupid, that when he hears he is going to die by the week's end, he causes havoc, alienates his friends and gets depressed enough to actually foolishly try and negate his future and ends up killing himself, to limit the control of 'death" on him. Foreknowledge is a dangerous virtue for uninitiated apes, such as you lot. I get the meaning of your analogy. Maybe, once upon a time. But not anymore. With so many versions of Gallifrey hiding out at the end of universe and others destroyed, we individual Time Lords do not have the sufficient means or sway to avoid or resolve all kinds of paradoxes. Well, I do. But not all.

Layla: And what makes it all so dangerous?

Valeyard: Temporal paradoxes are events arising from something other than the normal flow of time. Where effects preceded cause, and execution came before plan but very acutely so, falling in like missing pieces of a puzzle. Both the Doctor and I have faced the like of so. Like a Bootstrap paradox, where preceding information was actually a foreknowledge that came from the act of time travel, thus meaning the information had no real source. And yet it exists, as a plan embedded in time. Devised by just the need of existing. Some paradoxes are too benign and resolvable. We do not get them at first because we see time as linear, or in binary dimensions. Like the face of the Earth. But turns out it is a whole other shape, has a whole other side and has its own form of movement. While others are far more complex, like the descendants traveling back to kill their predecessors, creating what we know as-

Layla: Grandfather paradox.

Valeyard: Exactly. The most dangerous kinds of paradoxes are where an entity alters a fixed point in time, a surety. Or a Bootstrap Paradox too great, with no proper explanation of precedence. Of Proper cause and effect, however multi-dimensionally you choose to look. This could bring the whole of space-time continuum to its bare knees. As a law, there were mechanisms like the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, which course-corrected paradoxes like an entity meeting their past or future selves. As long as they share two different sets of ranging resonating frequencies and do not choose to physically coincide or "touch" each other. When they would be synced "back", or choose the go back to their own respective times, only the version furthest away down the road would remember such an incidence. And if they didn't, well that was a whole other story.

Doctor: And then there were us, the Lords of Time. The Ultimate limiter of Paradoxes, until we needed one in grave emergencies. But now its all changed.

Valeyard: And now, there exists more paradoxes than we care to admit or venture to know about. Living, breathing paradoxes among us.

[Over a new series of images overhead]

Layla: Who is she? I think I have seen her before somewhere, maybe a picture.

Daniel: Yeah, me too.

Valeyard: Amelia Pond, the girl who waited. The girl you lost.

Doctor: Stop it! Why her, why now? She isn't a paradox. Leave her out of this.

Scene 2:

[To the a new rendition of the slow tunes of The Doctor's Theme from the 9th Doctor era onwards, by Murray Gold, by any different artist]

Valeyard: Do you know why you even lost them, Doctor? Why so many versions of us lost them? I have had so many centuries to rethink and ponder over the pain and guilt it caused. Until I didn't anymore. And then using the Spear of Genesis to find the Sirens and retrace back their work helped. The Girl who waited. Two thousand years in the Pandorica, guarded by the one she loved. And whose idea was it to save her and stick her up there. Who had the mere inception of the idea? Where did the conceptual strands begin to use your sonic and give it to Rory. From his point of view, a future 'You' told him to. From your point of view, you were saved from the Pandorica and learned that you had to go to the future, come back, and do so. So whose idea was it?

Layla: That's..! I mean- That's impossible. Isn't it, Doctor?

Doctor: You have no idea how impossible that day was. But I was always a madman traveling in a box, standing at the end of everything. I have always been good at 'how' to save, than 'why' to do so....

Valeyard: River Song. Melody Pond. Another one you lost.[Video of her timeline, up until the library]. And whose idea was it to call her Melody Pond? Amy named her daughter, based on her friend Mels. Who turned out to be Melody herself, told by the Kovarian chapter of the Silence that friends of the Doctor would name her Melody Pond. Come to think of it, who told her to take on the mantle of 'River Song'? You learned it from her. And she learned it from you, the first time she met you, into adulthood.

Daniel: You bastard! He loved her!

Doctor: Leave her out of this.

Valeyard: So did I. When I acted as the Doctor. Luckily that was a paradox that resolved itself. She was the daughter of the Tardis, and hence got absolved of corporeal points required to make a paradox. You stuck her up in a library and later converted her to AI, while her essence was absorbed back by the Time Vortex itself. Even her sonic was a bootstrap paradox staring you in the face. You preserved her life in the library and got to know that your future-self had given her the sonic. Your future self, when you reached up to it, enacted the same, because you had seen it and stuck to the chain of events to save River. Both the versions of you did not devise the plan to first use the sonic. So who thought it first? Which is why even her sonic got used up into you converting her life essence into an AI that helped build the Glass House with you. It's not a sonic anymore. It's part of a resolved time event that limited a paradox.

Doctor: You lost her too, you know.

Valeyard: ..But Amy. Amy and Rory were not so lucky. They were living paradoxes from the end of the universe, living on borrowed time. A single incidence of time itself that could have brought the Anti-Time to your universe. Ending everything you know and love. Until you were saved.

Doctor: By whom?

Valeyard: Why, the Angels of course!

Doctor: What? Impossible! They are killers. Ruthless assassins and disruptors. Saboteurs of Time who only feed.

Daniel: What are these Angels, Doctor? Basically they look just like statues, and yet the Master said they can move. Not just mere traps that catch on to us. I still don't understand.

Valeyard: Or fallen Sirens. As you know now. Quantum-locked humanoids. Sufficient observation changes or reforms the thing being observed. Once known as the Sirens, with a sweet cry warning you of danger. They were beings of Angelic dispositions that died saving others; crying out the danger even when they were petrified, bit by bit, into beings of stone.

Doctor: An advanced and irregular metamorphosis of quantum-state, years worth of damage that was done to them in mere moments, turned them to stone. And then they were chained and buried by their own kind, unable to heal, ever. They died singing for those that buried their family with disgrace, because they were too ashamed to relate to their weakness, too guilty to make an association by race.

Layla: Quantum-locked? But there is always something out there observing you? Isn’t there? Bugs, flies, birds.

Doctor: Not by that logic. Quantum superposition and their negation does not work like that. For beings like them. Quantum states are collapsed by interactions, not because a literal person is literally looking at it.

Daniel: Huh?

Doctor: It’s a timey wimey correlation. The quantum state works in correlation to the one being hunted. Predator and prey, through time and space. They can be frozen only in time when observed by those they hunt or those that are thus consequently aware of them. You might have passed about three or four Angel statues in your lifetime, without even knowing what they were. And it did not affect them. Neither you.

Valeyard: And in rare cases, weaker Angels cannot engage you, to steal your time and cause a quantum resonance, unless they make you aware of themselves. Older Angels call it playing with their food. But for the ones lower down the food chain, it is but a necessity.

Layla: And important bit of trivia from a madman. I always imagined them as having some inconceivable and unimaginable real form. Not like this. I though the stone statue was just a disguise to taunt us or catch us not self-aware.

Daniel: And I thought life would be so simpler. With hiking and proper caffeine. No amount of caffeine, or steroids can block out all this!

Valeyard: I understand the frustrations of facing weakness; I have killed my own kind. But even I have not swooped this low. Their Angelic dispositions were gone. Now, they were 'Angels', with fangs and claws and strength, that fed on Artronic energy from the Time Vortex, basically any kind of radiation, to survive. But some, just a few handful of the original Angels, that came from the first and purest of Sirens, understood why the forced evolutionary chain had circumstantially made them to feed on the vortex itself. It was to strengthen up so they can heal irregularities in time.

Doctor: What do you mean?

Valeyard: River was a paradox that was absolved by her dying. Her essence was absorbed back by the Time Vortex itself, when you chose to make an AI out of her, after visiting Trenzalore with your Clara. Sticking her up in the Glass House solved everything.

Doctor: But?

Valeyard: But Amy and Rory were still stuck living with you, drawing the Anti-Time near. [Over images] Do you remember the Angel that sent them back. Because I did. I had that in my mind for sleepless nights. I could not forget that face for years to come. When I became the Valeyard, I wasn't bound by companionship anymore. So, I could kill the Master, force Rassilon to die, demolish the Daleks and bend them to my will. But after learning the truth, I could not undo the resolving of a paradox. I could not kill the Angel. You live in a universe. I live in my own bubble outside of it. In a whole multiverse.

Layla[mutters]: You have no idea how correct that is.

Valeyard[looks sternly]: My bubble is powered with something that is too strong for anybody or anything. Powered by two Tardises, channeling up each others powers in to an amplifier; powered by the Eye of Harmony. While you made a glass house, I made an asteroid-bunker for the Eye. A single Tardis could explode and burn up the universe. My Spear of Genesis could do at least tenfold. And it was strong enough to attract the Anti-Time to my corner of the multiverse, endangering the security of my bubble universe. I could not risk it. Plus I learned the truth about the Angels soon enough. And then I went on to learn the truth about the one that send them back.

Doctor: What truth?

Scene 3:

Valeyard: Like I said, I remembered that face for a very long time. But slowly I started remembering it even clearer. I remembered when Rory was sent back. That face of the Angel. It was calm at first, bound by duty and faith. Not the signs of a temperamental feeder, with fangs out. And I went back and retraced it. It was the solidified state of one Sister Dulla Lutha, one of the earliest Sirens killed by the Swarm. It was doing you a favor Doctor, resolving a paradox. Sending back Amy and Rory in time, shutting them up in a fixed point in their timelines, that you have no access to, until their death.

Doctor: A Siren? Amy and Rory?

Valeyard: If you were caught up with them even for a few months longer, the Anti-Time would have come for you too. You were all shadows, the last light to go out on the edge of the universe. The end of everything. But then you were brought back to a whole new version of the Universe. And in that moment you had forgot that you all were paradoxes, saved by a thought that no one had thought of.

Doctor: I did not. I really did not think of that.

Valeyard: You had encountered Sister Dulla Lutha quite a few times. When searching parts for the Eternity Clock, you had found an Angel with River, before determining it was just a regular statue. Back in 1561. It was Dulla Lutha all along, acting dormant. Diminishing her Artronic activity to zero. She was deciding how much of a threat River was as a living paradox, at that time. There were a few good Angels that you have unknowingly come across over the years. Rogues to most of their own kind. While others feed in contradiction to what they were deprived off for years, some still try and save the natural progression of time. The Matrix Museum has a few of them too.

Doctor: And what does this have anything to do with Time being alive?

Valeyard: Mere mortals would called it destiny, with preset instances that have to happen, no matter what you choose to do. Daleks call it continuity 'Time-templates'. Sontarans call it battle possibilities.

Daniel: And you wouldn’t? What would you call them?

Valeyard: We know better Doctor. The creation of Angels from Sirens were inevitable, a plan so ineffable and a conclusion so randomly impossible, that it took so long to figure out. Time is going to need you alive for the long run, Doctor. Because you end up saving time a few more times.

Doctor: Why?

Valeyard: Time is alive. And time heals itself. Alternate timelines are those that have deviated or diverged from their true or natural timelines, due to some temporal phenomena, or choice of will. Every action taken sums to an infinite number of actions not taken. And each such 'other' action can form an alternate universe.

Daniel: We know this stuff already.

Valeyard: No you don’t. From a metaphysical viewpoint, they can constantly wink out of existence with every choice we make, every words we choose, and every breath we take. In retrospect, every alternate universe is a true universe to itself. They could be visited by jumping time tracks, or an accidental relocation through a quantum tunnel, with a capsule.

[With proper video montages]

Valeyard: And then there are the universes that run parallel to each other, but have vast differences, not just alternating choices. Dangerous ones. And Time is full of them. Time houses it all, runs for it all, goes through it all. And time cannot end Doctor, and for its sake, neither can you. If it falls on you to keep time alive, or do I get your regeneration and face Anti-Time myself, 'Time' will tell[smirks]. But there must always be a form of you. That's what Time has decided. Like I said, Time is alive and it heals itself. Some paradoxes are of little consequence, and others can resolve itself through some interventionist approach.

Doctor: I know

Valeyard: Like helping Van Gogh paint the Krafayis. Defeating the Progenitor Daleks in 1963. Going back in time and damaging your own Tardis. Clara jumping in to undo the negation of your victories by the Great Intelligence. Helping Karzan Sardick. Helping Sarah Jane. Preventing me from using the Nathemus. Saving the Tardis itself so many times. But others, Time solves for itself. Provides you with a crude sonic when everything is about to end. Provides you with hope and love when there isn't any.

Doctor: They did for you too.

Valeyard: My time is different than yours, in all essence. And I am not the one that spoils it all up, Doctor. I did not have strands of the Change Engine in my Tardis.

Doctor: Time Variations, huh? Space and time folding on itself to have similarity in events around a single parameter - Me. So the Change Engine strand was causing all of it? Last few months, you and your reveals have driven me to a point where I am astounded in the extent and heights of your lies and fabrications. And yet I have to agree that I might end up wanting to believe you.

Valeyard: Doctor Zeuss did have a big mouth on him. I guess that is another thing we variations of the Doctor have in common. Stealing Tardises. And taking up talkative pets.

Daniel: Mate, you are one to talk-AAaaahhhhhhh. Aahh, AAaaaahhhh!

[Gets zapped]

Valeyard: So, where was I. Yes. Time Variations.

Scene 4:

Doctor: How does it work? Time Variations.

Valeyard: Anti-Time is not known by many. Is it a creature? Is it a biomechanical virus? Is it a single-walled cellular body too dangerous for interceptions? Or is it an entity bigger than life itself? But the oldest rumor surrounding it is that it was made to balance out time if ever the flow of time was disturbed. All of time passes through the Mouri. Has to pass through the Mouri. Or it would run wild. An in instances like that, the supposed Anti-time would be released, choosing when and where time needed balancing. What to uphold and preserve. What to delete. And that, the Anti-time and its presence is fueled by a lot of stuff.

Doctor: Yes, paradoxes. You said.

Valeyard: Well, not just paradoxes. But even smaller irregularities too, if caused for prolonged extents. There is a reason the better minds of Gallifrey never came up with an actual Change Engine but the Sisterhood did, not heeding to the adverse effects it might cause. And there is a reason the elders of Gallifrey would bash upon unsupervised travel of a Time Lord in a Time Capsule.

Layla: What do you mean? What does he mean Doctor?

Valeyard: The Time Vortex provides life within the spans and stretches of time itself. Which is why in a sense it can be said Time is alive, like I have explained.

Doctor: We Time Lords get our powers from the Time Vortex. The power to cheat death and corporeal decay, and jump to the next version of life itself. We miss out on most stuff. Birth. Death. The life and journey in between. But also the pain and loss that can come with it sometimes.

Valeyard: Change Engines provide life too. Not only that, it can amplify whatever it can find around, not just life. But pure, raw emotions, psychic links and openings, vulnerabilities, forms and forces of nature. The Sisters were not clever enough to have considered that. You saw the effects and the growth it caused in Gamma. A mixture of the powers of the Time Vortex and Change Engines can be dangerous. Which is why all such engines were destroyed in the old days. Only a few unknowns are left behind.

Doctor: And such power was within my Tardis.

[With proper flashbacks]

Valeyard[OC]: How did you think you reversed the life-process of the Raxacoricofallapatorian in Cardiff? You regressed it to such conditions because the Tardis could read your emotions, and so could the strands within it, unknown to the both of you. You started the thought, the Tardis drew the power from the Time Vortex, and the strands amplified it. The Tardis always had a close psychic link to you, but it was amplified so well because of the strands. The first time Clara met an older version of you and lost a part of her belief in you, she had lightly advised you to get a sonic screwdriver that does not roll away the next time. The last time you thought you saw her, and had your memories of her erased, the Tardis compensated by providing you with a new sonic, with metal claws. One that does not roll. Where and how did you think the Tardis git that emotion from? It is sentient. But it does not have the functionality of being your space nanny! And these were not the only times! There is a very good reason why elders in Gallifrey chided upon the idea of lone travel in a Time Capsule, through the Time Vortex, for years.

Doctor: Why?

Valeyard: Because that is what the Vortex and the Change Engines have in common. Facilitating and escalating life. And in case of the strands, it was even more than that. Reconstructing and amplifying. One should never travel in close proximity to that for so long as you have. It has irregular consequences. Not dangerous at first. But unwanted and irregular anyways.

Doctor: And what could have I caused that is such a threat?

[Touches his head with the gauntlet to mind-meld]

Scene 5:

Valeyard: Remember Pompeii. The fires at Pompeii, from the volcano Vesuvius in 79 AD burned down everybody. One of those was a girl, a Soothsayer of the Sibylline Sisterhood of the Mid-city of Pompeii who dies with her whole sisterhood for what she believed in. She was a proto-Pyroville who could see through time, due to the rift activity there, and breathing in the ashes of Vesuvius. Her belief in the higher power of her High Priestess, that was supposed to elevate her, safeguard her, killed her instead. Became the death of her. And what did your untimely presence and the strands in your Tardis do? Revive her form and essence. As Amelia Pond. The girl who waited. The girl who lived alone and wasn't afraid of anything much. And this time around, her belief was answered. She was saved, elevated even. To become the Doctors companion and friend in all of space and time. The girl who would get on to save flying kingdoms, fight pirates, face Silurians and see the wonders of life.

Doctor: How can it do that? I never knew.

Valeyard: Effects of constricting yourself to being a space-nanny, I suppose.

Doctor: Don’t! Just don’t. Not today.

Valeyard: Then came a simple working girl, Adeola Oshodi of Torchwood One at Canary Wharf, killed with her friends at the hand of Cybermen. Mutilated and perversed. Probed to be a puppet with an internal Cyber-conversion, leading others to the Cause of the Cybermen incursion at Torchwood. And what did the strands do again? Revive her form magically as the cousin who lived. Who a week earlier did not even exist. Up until a week before that, Adeola's' father, the supposed brother of Francine Jones, did not have a sister with a particular child named Martha. Martha Jones. The leader of men. Not a puppet anymore. The Woman who travelled to the ends of the world along with the Doctor himself, from the ruins of New York to the fusion mills of China. The brilliant scientist and tactician, who helped so many. Joined UNIT. Helped Torchwood. And so much more!

Daniel: Can they really happen like this, Doctor? Is he telling the truth?

Valeyard: Afraid you are copies of the essence of some long-lost companion? Think of it as a modernistic yet unbelievable form of regeneration.

Daniel: Doctor! Is it true? Is he telling the truth?

Doctor: I don’t know, Daniel. Honestly. I don’t know.

Valeyard: Then there were the ones that were too dangerous. You took River to the Frost Fair of Thames, in 1814, on her birthday. What you did not know was that you parked your Tardis on top a block of ice, with creatures nesting below. Only little at the time, the creature fed on the live energy emitted out by the Change Engine strands. Amplified exponentially by the power of the Time Vortex. In two days time, it grew the size of a lifetime. You see where I am going with this?

Doctor: No! It can’t.

Valeyard: And a few days after, your 12th version came along with Bill Potts. And the Tardis detected an unknown life form. And you had to face it and save the day as usual. Be the hero in the blue box.

Doctor: I did not know.

Valeyard: And then came the ones Doctor Zeuss told you about, the smaller ones, where the strands had minimal control. Time streams around them were degrading on their own, until you came and saved the day again. Different versions of you.

Doctor: Like what?

Valeyard: Like when your fifth incarnation had to give up his life, you subconsciously took on the face of a brash guard you had once seen. Facilitated by the Change Engine, your way of life saw an outing for a change. From a silent and mild-mannered version to a completely loud-mouth. You had now become a brash version of yourself, who would forego the ways of the Time Lord society. Who would be put on trials for his actions and misunderstood time and time again.

Daniel: Huh.

Valeyard: There were many more times, where Time Variations have happened. Out of the control or reach of the strands even. But just because they existed and traversed the Time Vortex with you. Some big, some small. Some for the good, some bad. Faces seen before reappearing, things that should not have happened - initiating on their own. End Contact!

Scene 6:

[The Doctor recovers, and stares down intently.]

Valeyard: There is a reason I have pursued your version the most, over the years. You are unique, Doctor. Your abundance of regeneration. Your Tardis, with a little portion of the Change Engine. You are my greatest resort against the Anti-Time.

Doctor: So that is all this is about then.

Valeyard: To go to the baffling lengths for it all and the subsequent results that have presented themselves along the way! I have got the opportunity to vent my rage and exercise my anger as the Valeyard. The King of Submission and Domination that I am. But you, Doctor. You still are bound by the burdens of being good. To never be cruel or cowardly. Never give up or give in. Despite whatever becomes of you, I hope this provides you with some closure before it all, Doctor.

Doctor: Before all what?

Valeyard: Like I said, my time is different than yours. And the battle for the future of your time has just begun. It’s a brave New World that is coming for you.

Doctor: What? What do you mean?

[Before the Valeyard can answer, a Time Rotor can be heard, but with more of a low-pitched grunt. It is the Type 45. A sudden shot sends the Valeyard tumbling down. Turns out the Master has used the materializing Tardis as a distraction. And he is actually behind the Valeyard and the group.]

[The Valeyard is send flying away to a distance.]

Valeyard: Aah!

Master: Quick, Doctor. Step in. Quick!

[He throws his Laser screwdriver to Daniel and he catches it barely, at waist level.]

Daniel: Really?

Master: Just this once. Setting 56.

[Daniel frees everybody, one by one.]

Doctor: Go. Go.

Master: Get in. Get in fast. Go. Go!

Valeyard [Efforts]: You won’t get away with this, you meddling, Knievel...

Master: Of course I can. Watch me. Now you see me...and.

[The Tardis starts dematerializing.]

Master: Now you don’t.

[They start to disappear.]

Valeyard: Now! Sirens, now!

[The Master is the last to enter.

We see two Angels take chase, in through the Time Vortex. Their lower extremities are barely visible. They are long and drawn, warped out into thin blue streaks. Like the Vortex itself. They have bigger wings now, with a black under-flap. The Angels do not mover, per say. But get carried through the Vortex.]

[The Doctor had gone up ahead and started the Time Rotors. Followed by Layla and Daniels. As the Master turns, and is closing the door of the Tardis, with his left hand, he feels a pull.]

Master: What!? Whoa...wha-

Daniel: Master! Move back.

Doctor: What? How did it get here?

[And Angel is hanging by the door, immobile. While there is a faint trace of another, warping in, not far behind.]

Master: Get back! Everybody get back.

[The inner ambient lights of the Tardis start malfunctioning. It starts to flicker vigorously. The red temporal-alarms start blaring in.

With each flicker of the red alarm, the Angel starts moving in. Bit by bit. Taking the time in between flickers, with nothing but complete black shadow around.

There is a light bluish hue from the outside Vortex. Soon the hue shines up the Angels face. Half a side.]

[Gradually, and frighteningly, the half-face of the Angel starts of calm. Like a stone face of a normal statue. But with each relapse of shadow and flickering alarm lights and sounds, the jaw grows wider! The fangs starts to emerge. Slowly. And steadily. By now, it is almost to a quarter of an inch. And growing. The whole face has changes to a dreadful and vile expression of timeless rage and unspoken measures of power and monstrosity. With one or two more lapse of shadow, the Angel is inside. Mouth and fangs all drawn out. But hands still by the side. With another flash and relapse, the other Angel is by the door now, still holding a handle from outside and just stepping in.]

Master: Doctor, how are they…

Doctor: Huh. Creatures of the dark! Lonely Assassins. The Sirens of Time lost. The Shadow Clan of the Vortex.

[The Angel is front has liked this last colorful and term-full analogy. With a flash and a shadow, its face goes the usual Angel-like blank again.

With each next passing shadow and relapse of the dark, red-blaring interior of the Tardis, the Angel can be seen spreading it’s wings. With each passing shadow, from the back POV (in a slow turn), the wings grow a bit bigger, with a crackling sound. When the POV turns to the front again, facing the Angel, two big shadows can be seen with the next relapse. The shadow of its wings. About a few feet each, with sharp talon-like ends forming from the wings.]

[With a fair warning, the Angel behind gets in a similar stance, and with another flash it has it’s hands on its face. While this one, draws out its fangs again, with the next two relapses.]

Master: Get back.

[He shoots twice at the front Angel, with his Laser screwdriver. And sends it flying and hurdling towards the other Angel. As a result both of them get expelled out into the Time Vortex.]

Layla: How did they?

Master: The door was open. The Time Vortex was giving them all the energy it needed. Maybe we should materialize within your Tardis.

[And they do. The door of the Doctor’s Tardis locks. Along with the white panel-door, with roundels, that lead to the interior and console.]

[The Master’s Tardis is parked neatly in one corner now.]

Master: But why did the protective bubble not stop it? How did it latch on?

Doctor: More to it later. More of now, how the blazing hell did you shoot and harm Angels with a screwdriver?

Master: Well.

Scene 7:

[From the distant past]

Architect: ..with. What!? Oh. But I thought. Where are the Doctor's companions?

Master: Send them ahead for recon or falling in to traps. They have temporally refitted configuration and realignment bands. And I have a lock.

Architect: But we do not have the forces capable of countering these..these Angels! Such creatures of the darkness.

Master: Don't worry. I do.

[With the tunes of Everybody Wants to Rule the World, by Lorde, performed by any choice and number of English artists]

[At some unknown point of time, In the past-

The Master can be seen fighting different alien forms. Kasaavins. Humanoids resembling distorted phases of pure and bright white light. Battling the Master. Armed with a Laser screwdriver (in slow-motion), the Master is repelling out the light-forms best he can. With a bloody, shrewd look on his face, the Master goes on to brutally torment the Kasaavin kind, best he can, in a long-drawn battle.]

[Present time -

There is a gathering in an open black space. Somewhere out of our known terrain. Out of the N-Space. The Master is surrounded by a multitude of light-beings. The herd of Kasaavins close in on him.]

Master: Please. All I need is your co-operation.

Random Kasaavin: Whereas, Master. We do not need you at all.

Master: You must understand.

Random Kasaavin: Come to think of it. We might need one thing. Just one thing.

Master: What? Tell me. I’ll give you anything-

Random Kasaavin: Your life.

[The others in the herd join in unison, chanting not so distinctively.]

Master: Oh. That is the dawn of a certain gruesome and gory self-realization. I was not expecting that.

Random Kasaavin: You have tricked us. Tortured us. Tormented us beyond the ends of our universe and your own. Why did you think there would be any other result?

[Advances towards the Master.]

[There is a sudden shot of light. The Master is holding a big, honking gun. The size of two palms. As he holsters the gun behind his back, the gun retracts its panels and becomes shorter.

The white humanoid has a big hole in its head. Through which the Master can be visible straightening up and holstering his weapon. The whole, with a tinge of yellow and orange burn at the circular rim it has created, spreads. It spreads towards the whole body, which withers away like dust.]

Master: Because I am asking nicely.

[There is a general murmur, chaos and dis content among the herd.]

Master: A little unconventional anti-matter gun. Banned in 41 systems. And counting. Made for unconventional people like yourselves. Do not think that me playing nicely means the Master has mellowed out. I am. And still always will be the Master. I mean, that, is the essence of mastery over something. A granted evil. Who understands the best way to showcase power, is to not have to talk about that power ever again. Others do it for them. That is how you exercise true strength. [Zoom out and a long echo] And that is how you all will kneel before the Master. Knowing that I have the power to end you. But I am choosing not to.

Random Kasaavin: What do you want from us?

Master: One of your most despicable or disregarded life forms would do.

Scene 8:

Doctor[growls]: You did what?

Master: It’s a Kasaavin prisoner. The most forgotten and irredeemable life form they probably have…

Doctor: How does that help?

Master: Well nobody is going to miss it. Him. He powers up my laser screwdriver.

[He opens a casing on his laser screwdriver. There is a little bit essence of a white light being stuck inside.]

Master: It makes an energy shot disappear completely out of N-Space, and into it’s own realms. It again materializes the shot in close proximity to the enemy. Like and invisible shot, up until the last moment. And Kasaavins have had dealings with quantum-locked species before. Their biology helps them to...Aah!

[He is shot down by a beam from the Doctor’s sonic]

Doctor: Their biology is so that it is not mutilated for your use and purposes!

Layla: Doctor, maybe you should calm…

Doctor[gestures]: Stay out of this.

Daniel: Doc…

Doctor: Both of you.

[They look each other in the eye. Daniel stands down.]

Master: I did for you, Doctor! I had to save you. You are my only hope now, to…

Doctor: To what? Save you? I thought you could be saved. I really did. But then you go and do this again. Just when I though you were changing.

Master: It’s of little consequence. Specially now…

Doctor: Of course it has consequences!

Master: Now!. I meant now-

Doctor [overlapping]: Everything has consequences. Everybody action. Every strain and thought of action we initiate. Otherwise the recently departed would have flash memories of only two days – the day we are born and the day we die. Not their whole lives they lived. Every day matters. Every little detail matters.

Master: Well, not to me it didn’t. All that mattered at the time was saving you.

Doctor: I really thought you could be changed. After Missy. And then you. But you have shown me that there are some things that are constant.

Master: Don’t. Don’t say that.

Doctor: You cannot be changed. This is who you are. A murderer.

Master: All I did. I did for you. And this is how you treat me?

[A little grate on the floor panel has lit up in red.]

Xylok: Layla Robbins. Danger imminent.

Layla: What?

Daniel: Oh, shut it off. Doctor, you...

Master: However I operate. Wherever I choose to act from. It is from the disoriented notion to gain your approval. Your trust. Or your attention. But I am beginning to wonder if you are worth mine.

Doctor: No love lost there.

Master: And suppose you could have done so much better without me?

Doctor: Yes I could have.

Master: Face it Doctor, you need me. Every good old-fashioned hero needs an old-fashioned evil. Like me. Without the monsters, there would be no Doctor. You would be out of a day job. You would be demoted only to a glorified space nanny and keeper of Earth.

Doctor: And so many would still be alive. So many that you have killed and mutilated over the years. It was foolish of me to think you could change. I mean, this is who you are. This is all you will ever be.

[With the two quarreling, the red light has spread, with a loud beeping now.]

Xylok: Layla Robbins. Warning. Danger imminent.

Layla[notices]: Doctor, what is that?

Doctor: No. No, Don’t! Step back! Keep back. Keep back

Master: What. What is it?

Doctor: Keep back.

Master: What?

Doctor: It is very prudent of you to keep yourself calmed down.

Master: Oh. Oh is that it? You arrogant bastard! You set me up in my own rage and then you want me to keep calm. You selfish prick!

Doctor: You don’t get -

Master: No, I don’t! You can’t expect to strike a match and it to not burn.

Doctor: No, you do not get what’s happening. What is about to happen.

Master: You son of a…

[The Master starts to charge forward. He crosses the console and has come to the middle now. Against the Doctor and his warning, the Master has advanced to the middle. A charge builds-up and catches on to him. Gripping him at the arms and legs. Red sizzling charges, like small streaks of lightning.]

Master: Aah!

Master: Doctor! Wha...what is that? What is happening?

Layla: Help him!

Doctor: Don’t. Don’t move.

Master: Give it to me straight. What is it?

Doctor: A psychic precipitant sensor. A trap my the Valeyard. That is how he was formed too. If you get any angrier, multiple forms of you from different universes would converge on you, in their worst mental state. And create a universe-shattering paradox. So don’t get angry.

Master: It is really hard not to right now. I just want to smash your face for a release.

Doctor: Yeah? And what did I do?

Aster: You really have to ask? Or you playing go-fish?

Doctor: Yeah.

Master: Well your face is all I have. And he shares it too.

[The Doctor bends down and works his sonic on the floor panels.]

Daniel: Doctor what are you doing?

Doctor: Reversing the polarity now.

Master: He keeps saying that. It means he has no idea.

Doctor: Don’t be so daft. I AM reversing the polarity of the precipitant sensor. So that it focuses and hones in on too much happy. Just the opposite psychic element. And none of us in here are too happy right now.

[Beep and click. The Master is released. Who works on tenderizing and caressing his cuffs.]

Daniel: Working your wrists like that? You have been caught or arrested before?

Master: A few times.

Doctor: It worked! Wait...hold on. What is that supposed to be?

[A pulsing and beeping starts]

Doctor: Wait...is that?

Master: Yeah.

Layla: What?

Doctor: A micro wave-form pulse! The Anti-Time.

[The Time Rotor stops, with a jerk and a crash.]

Doctor: Oh, what did he do to you. You poor thing.

[The Tardis communicates something by some ambient noises and beeping.]

Doctor: You sure? [Beeps]Out! Out. Everybody out!

Layla: Out where?

Doctor: In. In! Everybody in. Into the Type 45.

[They hurry into the Type 45 as fast as they can. The Master gets it going. They materialize out in open space. The Type 40 has stopped too, a little away from them. It is glowing bright and dark blue together.]

Master: What is it doing Doctor?

Doctor: Creating a bubble within itself. An insulation. Transitive one. But it fears it still wouldn’t be enough.

Daniel: Enough for what?

Doctor: The Anti-Time. I start it.

[With a big blast, the Tardis goes bang!]

Doctor: No!

[But the blast isn’t as dangerously explosive. The blast is blue, within concentric layers of lighter blue. And moving inwards. Like a controlled implosion. Pulling in space debris. It goes inwards and inwards as everything crumbles in. With one last little flash of the shape of the Type 40, now an explosion gives out. And whiteout!

Everyone opens their eyes, to see a red wave approaching. Hurdling towards them, fast. They cover their faces. Only to open them and realize that the wave has already passed. In fact it is not a single wave. But concentric red waves, from a point where the explosion happened. The point of explosion, however, is seemingly smudged with little gas clouds moving inwards, and a big gravitational pull stretching inwards, pulling peripheral vision into it, making it impossible to see what’s inside or how dense it really is.]

[The red waves carry on and on. From star systems to galaxies. To galaxy clusters. To the whole universe. Almost all of it. In many places, the passing of time has changed with the oncoming red waves. The Time Vortex now seems different. While not necessarily polluted, it seems to be in red and black, with specks of translucent matter inside. The movement of the Time Vortex itself is much more visibly distinctive, like a sharp moving picture. Almost hurtful to the eyes.]

Doctor: What has he done? My Tardis. My only Tardis. She was the only one…

Valeyard: I did not do anything, Doctor.

[A semi-visible image of the Valeyard appears. He is wearing a black long-coat. And holding it in a very recognizable classic way. With both hands.]

[The Doctor leaves the open Tardis-door and rushes towards him inside. The others catch him and block him.]

Valeyard: Have you really gone so native and unbearably impossible, Doctor. That you cannot even identify the difference between a hard-light image and a real person? And what were you going to do? Fondle my image with extreme prejudice?

Doctor: What did you do? You tell me right now what you did to my Tardis.

Valeyard: Like I said, Doctor. Nothing.

Doctor: I don’t trust you.

Valeyard: And neither should you. You seem to be learning. But I honestly kept a trap just for you. I had no idea the Anti-Time came from you. If I knew, do you think I would have kept you alive so that you can escape and initiate something that I dread? I had no idea it was your Tardis.

Master: He seems to have a point.

Doctor: Then what? Why her? Why my Tardis?

Valeyard: Her? Oh, how soft you have grown. You could be a God among men. Instead you bother about your ship this much. I do not know. Doctor. I honestly do not. And I do not care to. What had to happen, happened.

Master: What do you mean?

Vakeyard: Do you think it is a co-incidence that the Anti-Time is the strongest the very year you both have had triggered regeneration? A Watcher form and a ruthless killer. Both lives cut short. And the quantum resonance collected might just feed in to the order of the universe. Fuel a paradox somewhere else. Like I said. What had to happen – happened. The Anti-Time was always inevitable. You could not have stopped it even if you wanted to. What happens now, well. I suppose Anti-Time will tell.

[He disappears.]

Daniel: That bastard.

Layla: What now?

Doctor: I do not know. I honestly, do not know.