Autonomy

by Doctor Who

  'I hear the voice of the Consciousness, Kate,' she said. 'I know. I've known for a while.'

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  DOCTOR WHO

  'Shaneeqi...' Kate was painfully aware that she couldn't hold the lift for long.

  'All of my life,' Shaneeqi said, 'before my career. All an invention. How do you think that feels?' Her voice was almost a whisper as she added, 'I wonder how many more of us there are out there.'

  Her arm, flexed and rippling, was juddering.

  Kate's eyes bulged in horror and she got up, pain crashing in her knee again, and hobbled to the edge of the lift's roof.

  'I'm sorry,' said Shaneeqi again. 'So sorry.'

  Her left arm came up, smartly, robotically.

  There was a slurp and a crack, and her fingers split open as if gashed, revealing a horrible darkness within.

  And then there was a mechanical clunk, and the slim tube of an Auton gun extended neatly from the blunt end of her wrist, pointing straight at Kate.

  'Go,' said Shaneeqi, gritting her teeth. She nodded to the ladder. 'I can't hold it much longer.'

  Kate did not know if she meant the lift, or something else.

  She did not wait around to find out.

  Ignoring the stabbing pain in her knee, Kate climbed and climbed, hauling herself up, sweating, desperate, knowing she only had three floors to climb.

  Then two.

  She risked a glance over her shoulder. Shaneeqi was still standing there, feet apart, arm braced against the shaft wall, holding the juddering, screaming lift in place.

  Then one.

  Sparks flashed in the shaft below. Kate knew she only had seconds. She hauled herself up the last few rungs of the maintenance ladder.

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  AUTONOMY

  At the very top, there was a hatchway with a sturdy-looking wheel to turn. She grabbed it, pulled it. To her relief, it began to turn and the hatchway began to creak open.

  And the lift started to rise.

  Sparking, thundering, creaking, it ascended.

  Kate hauled the hatchway open and hurled herself through with seconds to spare, rolling over into a dark, bare, tiled area.

  The lift shrieked past, and there was a screeching, cracking noise, which Kate tried to block out.

  Gasping and sweating, Kate stood up, surveying the area quickly. One wall was given over to a vast metal tank, which she knew to be one end of the water reserves. It was covered with a vast, snaking metal pipe, moulded in burnished red steel and about fifty centimetres in diameter. A confusing array of valves and pressure-gauges adorned the pipework.

  'OK,' Kate murmured, pushing sweat-soaked hair out of her eyes. 'Here goes nothing.'

  Kate pulled the cocktail-shaker from the rucksack. She knew all she had to do was to get the Doctor's anti-plastic formula into the system. Then, she just had to use her phone to send a signal pre-programmed by the Doctor and the sprinkler system would start up.

  She scrambled towards the pipework on the walls. She unscrewed the nearest valve-wheel. It was stiff, and wouldn't move.

  'Step aside.'

  Kate looked up, her heart pounding.

  It was Kendrick. He had emerged from the door to the stairs. His gun-arm was already extended, the tube pointing straight at her head.

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  Kate grinned. 'Goldenball Paul. Never thought it would come to this."

  'Step aside, or you will be destroyed.'

  Kate did not remove her hands from the wheel. 'You must be kidding,' she said. 'I've come all this way. By the way - sorry about your missus. I think she's due the posthumous Greatest Hits collection.'

  Kendrick's eyes glowed. The whine of the Auton energy built up.

  Kate rolled to one side.

  The beam flashed across the maintenance area, exploding against the huge pipe.

  It burst.

  It exploded in a thunderous jet of water, a vast gout spurting up and hitting the ceiling, drenching the room, steaming in the heat.

  In the haze, Kate struggled to see Kendrick. But she skidded to the edge of the tank, undid the cocktail-shaker and hurled it deep into the pipe.

  Kendrick advanced on her through the cascade of water.

  Kate, pushing her wet hair aside, pulled out her phone and levelled it at him in both hands, like a weapon.

  'I know what you're thinking,' she said with a grin. 'It's just a phone.'

  Kendrick tilted his head on one side.

  'But seeing as this is the Contakta 4500 with full 80-meg broadband and sat-link facility, the most powerful phone in the world, you've got to ask yourself one question

  - do I feel lucky?' Kate grinned and winked. 'Well, do you, mate?'

  She pressed SEND.

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  AUTONOMY

  In the Doctor's pocket, Chantelle's phone vibrated.

  The Doctor's eyes opened wide as the blare of the alarms began to echo through Hyperville.

  'Bad luck, then, Miss D,' he said. 'I think things are about to get a little damp.'

  In every mall, in every shop, the nozzles of sprinklers descended from the ceilings.

  They sprouted from the artificial sky in the WinterZone and the SherwoodZone and Wild West World, and popped from the cobwebbed chandeliers and vaulted ceilings of the Doomcastle. And a microsecond later, triggered by the phone signal, the deluge system kicked in with all the tremendous force its designers had given it.

  Powerful jets shot from the nozzles. Gallons of water pounded from the ceiling like a monsoon, drenching and pounding Hyperville.

  Water smacked the floor like the sound of a billion kisses.

  Cold, clear water danced on the floors, sparkled and streamed off the shopfronts, filled the Plazas and the Atrium like a storm.

  The Doctor, soaked immediately, could hardly see Sir Gerry in the haze. He struggled to get free from his Auton captors, but could still hardly move. Then he noticed the hands which held him were becoming looser.

  He wriggled free.

  The Auton was staggering, buckling under the impact of the pounding water.

  The Doctor looked around. It was happening all over the Plaza - Autons' faces and heads beginning to dissolve like molten candles as the water, infused with anti-plastic molecules, streamed down on them.

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  The water sparkled and churned as it hit the marble floors of Hyperville, streaming down the escalators, pouring from the balconies into the Atrium. It had a powerful, pungent smell, like nail varnish mixed with wine.

  'Kate did it,' he murmured.

  Sir Gerry, soaked and bedraggled, was there beside the Doctor. 'How's it happening so fast?' he yelled above the thunderous noise of the water.

  The Doctor wiped his eyes. 'Molecular adhesion!' he shouted. 'Anti-plastic bonds to the polar hydrocarbon molecules as soon as it comes into contact. Replicates the ethyl alcohol solution instantly!'

  'I'll take your word for it,' Sir Gerry growled. 'You owe me for a new suit, you daft beggar!'

  I’ll buy you a hundred!' The Doctor nodded. 'Right now, I think that's the least of our problems!'

  Sir Gerry spun round. The Consciousness was there, water streaming off it, eyes blazing bright green, its finger-tendrils expanding into multiple tentacles, reaching out for every corner of Hyperville.

  'You will die!"

  The voice was now nothing like Miss Devonshire's. It was a deep, screeching howl, as if borne across the wastes of Time.

  'You will die for this,’'

  Beta-4 staggered through the torrents, its little hands reaching out to clutch the Doctor and Sir Gerry. But before it reached them, its feet had begun to dissolve like sugar.

  As they watched, Beta-4's face began to bubble and stream with molten plastic like a waxwork exposed to a fire. In seconds, it was an unidentifiable blob of plastic, dwindling to a black puddle on the floor.

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  AUTONOMY

  The Doctor took Chantelle's
phone out again, and the HyperCard which Kate had given him. 'One more thing. I need to direct the frequency of the feedback loop. Maximise the signal.' He jammed the HyperCard into the slot at the back of the phone. 'Voilà.'

  'Doctor!' Sir Gerry had been grabbed by one of the pink tentacles, and was slowly being pulled into the heaving, green centre of the Consciousness, which now had only a roughly humanoid form. 'Do summat, ye cloth-head!'

  'Just a couple more calibrations! Oooffl.' The Doctor was pulled flat on his back on the soaking floor, and Chantelle's phone, with the HyperCard plugged into it, shot from his grasp, skittering across the soaked Plaza.

  He grabbed for it, but it had gone - and now he, too, was being dragged by a grasping tentacle towards the Consciousness. It wrapped itself around his leg, tight as a plastic cord.

  All around, the Autons sagged, sinking to their knees.

  The witches on their broomsticks crashed, hitting the great glass Waterwall and fracturing it, sending further cascades out into the Plaza. The small dolls had already dissolved into shapeless pink blobs.

  The Doctor cast a helpless look at Sir Gerry. I didn't get to press Send! It won't work!'

  Above the moon, the spheres of the Cluster pulsed.

  Their purple light spread over the moondust and the craters, lighting up the dark sky. They hovered. They prepared to draw closer.

  The time was almost at hand.

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  Down the soaking escalators came two figures, hazy in the steam of the Plaza.

  'Chantelle! Reece!' The Doctor yelled. The phone! Get the phone!"

  Chantelle looked around, uncertain at first as to where the Doctor was desperately trying to point.

  Then she saw.

  She scooped the phone up with both hands, dodging the flailing limbs of the Auton-waitress in front of her.

  'Send!' the Doctor yelled. 'Send the signal!'

  Chantelle was knocked flying by the thrashing Auton.

  The phone flew from her hands, pirouetting through the air.

  Reece cupped his hands like a fielder. And, seemingly to his own surprise, he caught it smartly. He stared at the phone in his hands in astonishment.

  'Send, Reece! Send!' yelled the Doctor.

  But something odd was happening to the phone.

  It had curled up in Recce's hand like a giant slug. And now it extruded plastic tendrils from every corner, black slithering tentacles of plastic which wrapped themselves around his hand, tightening on it, cutting off the blood supply.

  Reece yelped in horror and fell to his knees, hand held out, looking at the living-plastic phone in horror, feeling the clammy plastic tightening its grip.

  At the edge of his mind, on the other side of the rushing streams of water, he heard the Doctor's voice.

  'Just press the button, Reece! Do it!'

  Reece reached out, eyes shut, and stabbed at the SEND

  button.

  The final calibration pulsed through the systems of 230

  AUTONOMY

  the Central Program, hitting the nervous system of the Consciousness like a freight-train. It screamed.

  High above the Earth's moon, the cluster of spheres lost their purple glow. Each of them crunched and crumpled as if buckling under some internal gravity.

  Then, as one, they dropped into the moondust and lay inert.

  The Nestene Consciousness screamed and screamed, the sound echoing through every hall and mall and balcony.

  Carrying through the shattered ruins of Hyperville like a requiem.

  The phone's tentacles curled up, as if it was a dying insect, and it unravelled itself from Reece, flopping inert and molten to the wet floor. Reece gaped in horror at the white weals on his hand.

  The Consciousness thrashed, its protuberances letting go of the Doctor and Sir Gerry.

  Its web of pinkish-green tendrils, reaching up and out and into every surface of Hyperville, rippled and throbbed as if a huge electrical charge had been pumped into it.

  At its centre, the figure which had once been human, had once been Elizabeth Devonshire, bucked and thrashed. Its mouth opened wide and dark, pulling apart so wide that it seemed to rip, the face which had once been Elizabeth Devonshire's collapsing in on itself.

  The tentacles began to shrivel, to dry. They twanged and snapped like vines drying in the summer heat.

  As they watched, the physical form of the Nestene 231

  DOCTOR WHO

  Consciousness began to crack, spilling out a green froth. It erupted in a dozen, a hundred places, bursting, popping, finally dissolving on the floor, steaming and noxious. Green fumes filled the Atrium, smelling of molten plastic and the stench of alien flesh.

  The whole process had taken a little under ten seconds.

  Beneath the endless torrents of water, the Doctor and Sir Gerry slowly picked themselves up, the Doctor nodding in gratitude at Chantelle and Reece.

  There was silence in the Plaza, apart from the endless rushing of the water.

  Chantelle's phone warbled.

  She answered it. 'Hello?'

  The Doctor held his breath.

  Chantelle looked up at the Doctor and smiled. 'It's Kate,'

  she said. 'She's fine.'

  232

  FIFTEEN

  ' Poofsaid ' SirGerry,throwinghishandsupintheair in despair.

  Kate Maguire looked away from the office picture window, where she was standing and watching a vast clean-up operation. 'Beg your pardon, Sir Gerry?'

  'Poof.' he said again. 'All gone! One mad night, lass, and there goes years of work.' He sighed, folded his arms, came to stand beside her at the window. 'Good job this place was insured,' he muttered.

  Kate laughed. 'What - against extraterrestrial attack?'

  'I'm sure there's summat in't small print,' he growled, knocking back a double whisky, then pouring another for himself and one for Kate. 'You can't be too careful these days. Anyways, I'm not convinced. I think they were terrorists, meself

  Kate shook her head in disbelief. 'You know, I'm starting to

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  see what the Doctor means about us.'

  'Damn good fettling, this place is going to get,' said Sir Gerry, nodding. Then it can be used again! Think of all the positives!'

  Down below them, bustling activity had been going on for several hours under emergency lighting. Vacuum drains had removed most of the water, Kate saw, although some puddles lingered.

  Camouflaged operatives in gas masks were carrying the Auton remains away in translucent, coffin-like pods.

  Forensic teams were all over the shattered shop windows, taking samples. Vast areas of Hyperville had been sealed off with opaque white plastic. Above the complex, helicopters clattered ominously.

  Within an hour of the defeat of the Consciousness, a uniformed military squad had arrived, cutting through the Hyperville blast-doors and filling the malls and boulevards with lorries and jeeps. The officer in charge, her eyes covered by reflective sunglasses, had told Sir Gerry in no uncertain terms that he was to stay in his office and be prepared to give a full report. They would have removed Kate from the site, but Sir Gerry had insisted that she was his assistant and she had to stay.

  Now, in his office, Sir Gerry offered Kate her glass of whisky. 'So - get a good story in the end, did you?' Sir Gerry asked her casually.

  'What?' She was momentarily nonplussed.

  Sir Gerry chortled. 'I didn't come down in't last shower, love. I know an undercover hack when I see one. Rumbled you right from the start. Thought I'd let you get on with it.

  See what you turned up.'

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  AUTONOMY

  'Oh. Right.' Kate blushed, and took a sip of the strong, harsh whisky to cover her embarrassment.

  'Nowt to be sorry about. You did a good job. I'd rather have you working for me any day over any of those pushy business-school types. "Giving it 110 per cent", indeed.' Sir Gerry snorted, then chuckl
ed.

  Kate grinned. 'Well, quite. Anyone who says they're giving 110 per cent can drop their effort by a tenth and still claim to be giving their all. They never think about that.'

  'Quite so!'

  'So,' Kate said, 'what now? For you? I mean - it's all over, isn't it?'

  'Don't be daft, lass! I've got fingers in hundreds more pies. Literally, in fact. Mrs Bidney's Steak-and-Kidneys?

  Know them? Bestselling frozen pastry goods on the market?'

  Kate nodded. She had seen the adverts. 'You've got a share in those?' she asked, impressed.

  'Miss Maguire, I am Mrs Bidney's Steak-and-Kidneys. I had 51 per cent of the bloomin' shares. Bought the beggars out in a hostile takeover just before Christmas. We're about to crack the USA.' Sir Gerry chuckled. 'Never put all your eggs into one basket, lass. That's my first rule of business.'

  Kate decided not to challenge him on the various 'first rules' of business she had heard over the past few days.

  She put her hands behind her back and swivelled on one heel. 'Sir Gerry? I've... been having a few thoughts.'

  'Oh, yes?'

  'This place... It was never right. Oh, I know people came here, spent money, but... well... all that artificial stuff.

  Plastic wonderlands and so on. Not very twenty-first century really. Not very eco.'

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  Sir Gerry narrowed his eyes. 'What did you have in mind?'

  'I'm thinking mega-green,' said Kate, eyes shining excitedly. 'Wind-powered, solar-powered eco-complexes.

  All in the open air. Renewable energy sources, recycled materials...' She smiled. 'It would be great to have your backing for something like that.'

  Sir Gerry clapped her hard on the shoulder, making her wince. 'By'eck, Kate. This could be the beginning of a beautiful partnership. And what about that Doctor feller?

  Will he want in on it?'

  Kate put her glass down and extricated herself from Sir Gerry. That reminds me. Two ticks.' She waved at him as she hurried to the door. The soldier on guard outside immediately stepped forward to bar her way, but she put her hands on her hips sternly. 'I need the loo,' she snarled.

  'I get very, very tetchy if I don't get to go when I need it.'