by Cour M.
“He was needed for upgrading.”
“He was not yours!” Eleven cried, “Craig was an innocent man who had just become a father, had a girlfriend who cared for him, and your last chance is over.”
“Now the Doctor shows what he really is,” the cyberman continued in that monotone tone that was always used. “We, the cybermen, never forget.”
“Not what you think he is,” the Doctor said, brandishing his screwdriver, “what I believe myself always to be, when I remember what I am. I am the Doctor, this is a sonic screwdriver, and you are a cyberman, which means…” here the Doctor lowered the sonic screwdriver to the cyberman’s head and then his head began to twitch. “Whatever orders you are given are shared on the same data core that is stored in your programming, which means I don’t need you to talk, because your bodies will do it for you.”
The cyberman twitched more and more violently as the sonic worked, and then it sat straight.
“What is your attack objective?”
“To overrun the settlement of Cardiff.”
“Why does Cyberiad wish for you to siege the city? Why do you want the planet Marinus?”
“Not all of Marinus is required for our mission. Just Cardiff.”
“Why, just for spare parts for your army?”
“That is an added prize, but no.”
“Then what is?”
“We come for the TARDISes. We come for the TARDISes.”
Eleven and Martha looked on each other in alarm while General Sidney began to take over the interrogation. They had been correct, as they had feared.
“You know about our TARDIS field. But they are half-grown.”
“Half-grown and will never fly,” Eleven added, “so why would you want them?”
“Because we shall have the components to finish constructing them.”
“Impossible!”
“No, Doctor, just improbable. But we have gotten ahold of it.” The Cyberman looked at the rest of the people in the room, “the secret of Gallifrey that never remained a secret. Your hyper-looms here are insufficient, and the Doctor knows why. Because they are attached to the Eye of Harmony, and it is dying. But we found a new supply. We found him.”
“Him?” General Sidney repeated, “Who is him?”
“He has discovered the Eye of Harmony, and has it in his possession.”
“Who is he?”
The cyberman was silent.
“Make him speak, Doctor,” General Sidney ordered Eleven to do. “Make him tell us.”
“I can’t,” Eleven said simply, “because he doesn’t know.”
“Information on the identity of the Eye of Harmony possessor to be unknown,” the cyberman said.
“If the cyberman knew, then he would tell us. No, that is all that he has been told, I believe.”
“So, the identity of their supplier is not revealed to them all. But you said that all of the cybermen operate under the same information.”
“Yes,” Eleven admitted, mystified, “therefore it makes us wonder, what order was given for secrecy, and who gave the order for it.”
“Upgrade in progress,” the cyberman said suddenly, and then he forced his way out of the shackles, preparing to attack them as he raised up his arm to shoot them all. All in the room panicked, except for the Doctor who removed a slab of gold from his pocket and pressed it against the cyberman’s neck. The cyberman’s circuits blew and he fell down, paralyzed.
“Told you that cybermen in shackles was always a bad idea overall,” Eleven smiled, “but don’t worry. I’m here. And I’m brilliant.”
“Is it fully paralyzed?” Martha asked, leaning down and inspecting the cyberman.
“That’s a full block of gold, so yes, it will. And it will be too weak to upgrade itself, so come along Martha.”
Eleven jumped up and began to walk, with Martha instinctively following after him. Yet General Sidney, wishing to know all, also ran after them.
“You’re leaving now?” He blurted out.
“Of course I am,” Eleven said, “there’s a universe out there and we have questions.”
“Doctor, I request that you give us more answers than that.”
“I will, once I get all the answers. In the meantime, call for aid.”
“We still have a sizable unit.”
“General,” Eleven demanded, opening the TARDIS for Martha, then pushing her within it, and then turning back to the General, “if all goes ill, this will not be the last battle that you have to fight, but the first one. And I don’t want to return and see you all massacred. Send for reinforcements.”
Closing the TARDIS behind him, he looked at Martha.
“Well, up for another adventure?”
“Saving the world, huh?”
“Yes, as always.”
“Well,” she smiled, “let’s get on with it then.”
“Don’t worry, I’m a better driver than I was before.”
Eleven jumped up, put in some coordinates and then they were off.
“So,” Martha began, while leaning on the consul unit, “we fly again.”
“Yes, we do,” Eleven said, swiping her bottom with a rag that he was using to wipe down his screen.
“But that won’t distract me, Doctor,” she added as he walked down the steps and began to work on the wires. She followed him and sat down on the steps, leaning against a pole railing. “What that cyberman said, that was the big secret, wasn’t it?”
Eleven didn’t respond.
“Doctor! I know you can hear me.”
“I know,” he said, working with some wires under the unit, “I can, I just…”
“You don’t want to answer me.”
“Precisely.”
“But what use are there for secrets now? None. You have nothing to lose anymore. That cyberman said that the Eye of Harmony was dying in our yards. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“That’s part of it.”
Martha moved down the rest of the steps to get closer to him, for emphasis.
“Then what is the rest? You can’t have me on this adventure with you and not tell me everything. Don’t you remember?”
“Remember what?”
“What always happened when you withheld information from me. People got hurt when you did. And so did I.”
Eleven stopped maneuvering the wires and was still for a moment, letting the guilt wash over him. Seeing what was occurring, Martha moved even closer to him and sat down near him.
“You must calm down,” she instructed.
“How do you know that I am getting angry with myself now?”
“Because I know you. I know how far you will run before you will face something.”
Eleven’s shoulders began to slacken, for that was always the problem with Martha. With the Ponds, he could run, always run away from a revelation or secret if he wished. They were his family, but there was always something about himself that he could keep secret. Yet with Martha, with her scrutinizing eyes, she always wanted to know the truth, and every time he withheld it, people did in fact get hurt. And so did she. And, to be fair, so did he in the process.
“How different you are than Amy and Rory,” Eleven sighed, “with them, it was secrets that kept us safe.”
“But we are not safe now. Not if cybermen know this secret of yours.”
Eleven nodded, and then he began to explain.
“Yes, the Eye of Harmony is the main key. The initial block transfer equations necessary to create a Complex Space-Time Event like a TARDIS can only be assembled in a null-zone connected to the Eye of Harmony. This null-zone, as you know, is just called the Hyper-Loom or sometimes the Womb.”
“So what we have them connected to is also called the womb?”
“Yes.”
“And when the Master began to grow the TARDISes, he found the Eye of Harmony and used it to trigger the growth.”
“Yes. In a very real sense, Complex Space-Time Events like a TARDIS always
exist. But the TARDIS is actually even more connected to us Timelords than you could ever know. Being a four dimensional being, a TARDIS assists the Time Lords in its own creation. Legend has it that the Matrix, the Mother of all Gallifreyan Time ships, has always existed and created us Gallifreyans just so she would have a point of origin.”
“Do you believe this myth?”
“Yes and no at the same time. Well, what can I do, it’s a good story.”
“Does this legend say anything else?”
“This same legend also states that the Matrix secretly controls the Time Lords. Now that, I do not believe. I do not wish to believe that we lack free will. And besides, I have proof of that.”
“What proof?”
“Me,” Eleven smiled sadly, “If the Matrix controlled us Timelords, then what would be the benefits of a man who ran mad, stole a TARDIS, with the TARDIS also stealing him, and then flew around the universe, changing things in a way that upset my people. To be honest, Martha, my people didn’t like me very much.”
“Why am I not surprised?” She chuckled, punching his chin lightly and playfully, “you can never be controlled. And people fear what they cannot control.”
“Yes, they do. And we Timelords always fear what we cannot control. We fear change. We fear good dress-sense.”
Martha laughed at this, and Eleven took her hand, continuing on.
“The Hyper-Looms provide the Capsule with a block-transfer connection to the Prime Eye of Harmony on Gallifrey.”
“But Gallifrey is gone.”
“Exactly. Therefore, for the cyberman to claim they know someone who can supply it is frightening. How could someone else possess it, it is not possible.”
“And yet here we are.”
“Here we are.”
“And how many impossible things have we seen? Remember Lazarus!”
“Ah, by the light of the Medusa Cascade, I truly do!”
“Two impossible things happening in the matter of one day. I think we will survive this. But Doctor, was that all that was needed to get a TARDIS to fully live?”
“The prime eye is the block-transfer connection that serves as the heart of the Complex Event. The Space-Time Event combined with the Eye of Harmony connection forms an Extra-Dimensional Framework known as the Metastructure.”
“The Metastructure?”
“Yes, but then after that, we had something else that is needed to bring a TARDIS to life, and that was the Gallifrey Black Hole Shipyard, while there it led to the creation of the TARDISes Time Travel Capsule. After being connected to the Eye of Harmony, the Space-Time Event is moved to neural construction docks at the Gallifrey Black Hole Shipyard to complete its growth.”
“So, for us to create a full grown TARDIS, we would need another prime Eye of Harmony, which are rare, and then they shall also need to be moved to a neural construction dock, like your Black Hole Yard on Gallifrey.”
“Yes.”
Martha propped her elbows on her knees and looked out ahead of them, at the walls of the TARDIS.
“Now that I have gotten a chance to look at this place, it really is beautiful.”
“Yes, it’s a great deal different than how it looked before.”
“Yes, it was. Why did you change it?”
“When I regenerated from the face that you remembered me, I regenerated in here. When I did it, my regeneration energy blasted all around and therefore partly exploded the TARDIS and it was on fire.”
“Does that always happen when you regenerate?”
“No. Usually when I regenerate, it is simple and is mostly self-contained.”
“Then why did it explode everywhere?”
“Because I was alone. I didn’t have a companion near me to protect, therefore I didn’t have to worry about harming anyone.”
“Yes, Rose, Donna and I were gone.”
“Yes, you all were. Then when I finally regenerated, I literally fell out of the TARDIS and almost collided into Big Ben. That’s how I found my next companion. I crash landed in her yard.”
“That was Amy Pond?”
“Yes, Amy Pond. She was a little girl at the time. Unfortunately, the engines were phasing, so I had to leave her to take a trip into space to help the TARDIS recover. I came back, thinking I had only been gone for a few minutes, when I had been really gone for twelve years.”
“Twelve years?”
“Yes, twelve years.”
“She must have been angry.”
“Yes, at the very beginning, I was doing things wrong.”
“It wasn’t your fault, nor was it the TARDIS.”
“No, she just had a problem repairing herself.”
“And now she’s turned into this.”
Martha and Eleven looked around them.
“And if the others grow, she will have sisters and brothers.”
“Yes, she will.”
“Are we still going to be at odds about this?”
“I worry that we might.”
They both just sat there, waiting and waiting.
Waiting for the other one to speak.
But nothing came at first.
Both knew very well that they were still at odds on this, and perhaps they always would be.
“If we somehow get the Eye of Harmony.”
“Whoever has it won’t let it go so very easily.”
“No, they won’t. Whoever this ‘he’ is. Doctor, do you have any idea who this unknown person is?”
“No, I don’t.”
“And we are flying right into it?”
“It’s what we always do.”
“Yes, it is. And remember what happened last time?”
“I do, but this time we are more prepared. This time, I have a plan.”
“And what is this plan?”
“I’m going to do a thing.”
“What sort of thing is it?”
“I have no idea, but when it happens, man is it going to really happen. So respect it when it does happen.”
“And we are really going to Mondas?”
“If the problem is no longer coming to you, you have to go to it.”
“Right.”
Eleven jumped up and as he landed it, the familiar sound signaled that they had come to a halt.
“Well, here we are. Near Mondas, it is.”
Chapter 3
Ten becomes Five
To Janus, they landed and Ten looked on his three companions.
“Well, we are here,” he announced.
“No way!” Ace cried, going to the doors and then back. “I mean, I know what happens already, but it’s been so long.”
“I know,” Ten smiled.
“It was for us as well,” Rory added, “when was the last time you traveled this way?”
“It’s been almost thirty years for me,” Ace cried, “All the way since the 1980s. And the TARDIS, look how different it looks!”
“Yes, just like old times,” Ten grinned, “and new times.”
“Yes, and it’s brilliant! Well, I should wait and see if it is. Goodness, I wish that I had my weapons with me, because I never know what it is with you.”
“Oh, no guns this time,” Ten objected, “I don’t like guns.”
“What?” Ace faltered, “you were always a bit peaceful, but again… what?”
“Oh, so that’s the way it was with you before,” Amy interjected, “for when I first met you, you didn’t like weapons, and then that changed.”
“What do you mean that it changed?” Ten asked, feeling a little insecure about his future self. “That I changed?”
“Well, you couldn’t help it,” Rory explained, “you were sick of people dying or not being avenged because of your mercy.”
“I what?”
“That’s why we travelled with you,” Amy said, “we had to keep track of you.”
Ten took a step forward and lowered his voice.
“Tell me truly, do I become a bad man?”
“No,” Amy and
Rory confirmed, “that was not what you became. You simply just got tired of people dying for things you could have stopped.”
“And…”
“What?”
“Well, you got tired in general,” Rory admitted, “Doctor, you got so much older while looking young, and that had an effect on you.”
“You couldn’t feel as you could before,” Amy stressed, “you were sometimes losing your humanity… if Timelords can say that about themselves, but you never lost your desire to save. You always wanted to save people.”
“And besides, what does it matter that you accept guns?” Ace continued, “for Doctor, you had your bad patches before. Remember how you were before I met you? Before you had… regenerated.”
Ten flinched, looked away and turned the parking brake on.
“You have a troubling past, Doctor,” Ace continued, “as long as you don’t return to that, then you will always be fine.”
“What regeneration was that?”
Ace licked her lips, her mouth suddenly feeling very dry.
“Well, it was when he was Six.”
“Right!” Ten exclaimed, his optimistic air hiding the unease he was beginning to feel as memories began to flood his mind, “we didn’t come to Janus just to stand inside here and not figure anything out. I’ve landed us right in the middle of the city New Jannifflinquin.”
“New Jannifflinquin?” Rory asked, skeptical.
“By god, does your face always do that ‘I doubt everything’ thing?”
“Yes, it does,” Amy answered for Rory.
“Well New Jannifflinquin was named after the original Jannifflinquin,” Ace explained, “because Janus was basically a planet that was inhabited by refugees from the planet Caravel. Jannifflinquin was such a popular place that they used the name again. And this was precisely where that handsome Time Traveler, Jack Harkness, gave me a lift.” Ace looked at Ten, slyly. “How did you know?”
“I’m good at guessing.”
“Or maybe my ticket for the football game that had all my information gave it away,” She smirked, and Ten did so in turn.
“Still as perceptive as ever, Ace.”
“Always, just give me a weapon to hold, and I’ll be as I always was.”
“Once more, I don’t like guns this round.”
“Well, you had better get used to them when it comes to me,” Ace said, opening the TARDIS doors, “And if you don’t like it, then tough.”
