c 2016 - Trading Futures [47]
There were no rogue states remaining and the world’s secret services kept almost every square inch of the planet electronically monitored. The only two remaining superpowers - indeed, the only two remaining sovereign powers - were the United States and the Eurozone, who dominated the world between them. But they were on the brink of war, as both were trying to extend their sphere of influence into power vacuums in North Africa and the Middle East. “Peacekeepers” from both sides took up positions.
Elsewhere in the world, Eurozone RealWar tanks were covertly sent into action against American corporate interests. The situation was a tinderbox that could have lead to World War Four. The United Kingdom was now part of the Eurozone and the semi-elected British President Minister was bound by the Articles of European Zoning, despite polls showing 84% of the British population taking the American side in the dispute. Britain secretly maintained its own intelligence service, run by the ancient Jonah Cosgrove. The American President was Felix Mather, former CIA astronaut.
There was a European national soccer team, and games were divided into eighths to fit more adverts in. Rhinos only existed in clonetivity. Human cloning was possible, but very expensive. Hypersonic jets could cross the world in a few hours. Nuclear bombs were used in civil engineering. There was a North China and a New Kabul. Kurdistan was a country in its own right, in a region blighted by civil wars. British Airways had gone bankrupt, the BBC was replaced by the EZBC. More than one channel tunnel was operating.
The international flow of money was through the IFEC computer system. Arms dealer Baskerville launched an ambitious con job to take control of it. He posed as a time traveller from ten thousand years in the future, and offered Cosgrove a time machine in return for access to the powerful EZ ULTRA computer. The CIA got wind of the plan, as did Sabbath’s Time Agents; the eighth Doctor, Anji and Fitz; and the rhino-like alien Onihrs. The Doctor and his companions uncovered Baskerville’s plan just as shootings in Tripoli triggered a potential world war.
The earliest human clones were mindless, bred for use as perishable stunt doubles in motion pictures. Humanity became uneasy with the morality of this and ended the practice. Cloning fell into disuse, but scientists periodically revived the art. [48] The British government recovered dystronic missiles - weapons that could destroy all organic life in a set radius - from an Arcadian spacecraft. [49]
In 2017, Adelaide Brooke began her doctorate in Physics at Rice University in Texas, having studied Physics and Maths at Cambridge. [50] Ramirez Harmon was president of Mexico in 2017. [51]
? 2017 - The Enemy of the World [52]
Rockets could now be used to travel between continents on Earth - the journey from Australia to Hungary took around two hours. Hovercars made shorter trips. Television pictures were broadcast via videowire.
The political situation on Earth had stabilised. National concerns were put aside and the world was reorganised into large administrative areas called Zones, such as the Australasian, North African and Central European Zones. The world was organised by the United Zones, more properly known as the World Zones Authority. Commissioners dealt with multinational concerns such as Security matters. A Controller led each Zone.
One of the major problems the world faced was famine. The scientist Salamander announced he could solve the problem using his Mark Seven Sun-Catcher satellite, which made previously desolate areas of the world into fertile farmland that robots could harvest. Within just a year, the Sun-Catcher had solved the problems of world famine, allowing crops to grow in Siberia and vineyards in Alaska. In the more fertile areas, concentrated sunlight forced growth: each summer could bring three or even four harvests. Salamander was hailed as the saviour of mankind.
Soon after Salamander’s announcement, a series of natural disasters struck, including a freak tidal wave that sank a liner full of holidaymakers in the Caribbean and the first volcanic eruptions in the Eperjes-Tokaj mountain range since the sixteenth century. These were caused by Salamander’s followers in a bunker below Kanowa using his technology. Salamander had convinced them that the Earth’s surface was highly radioactive, and that they had to fight back against the aggressors.
The second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria uncovered the truth: that Salamander had been gradually assassinating his political opponents within the United Zones and replacing them with his own people in a bid to become the dictator of Earth. Salamander was defeated when his followers in Kanowa learned there had been no global nuclear war. He tried to escape in the TARDIS, but was sucked into the Vortex when the Ship’s door opened in flight.
In 2017, UNIT closed their file on the Quadrant Incident. [53] Kakapos were extinct on Earth by 2017. [54] The Doctor placed a personal advert “Ace - Behind You!” in an NME from 2018. Ace bought a copy outside Ladbroke Grove hypertube station. [55] Paletti wrote the opera The Fourth Sister, including the stirring Rebirth Aria. [56]
The risk of nuclear warfare diminished after the Southport Incident, when governments realised that the stockpiling of atomic weapons could only lead to a serious accident or all-out nuclear warfare. [57]
The Doctor acquired a ten pound coin from the time of King William V. [58] Single Molecule Transcription replaced the microprocessor in 2019. [59]
From around 2019, Earth experienced forty long years of chaos including climate change, difficulty with the ozone layer and an “oil apocalypse”. The human race almost reached extinction. [60]
2020 - The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood [61]
The eleventh Doctor, Rory and Amy arrived in the village of Cwmtaff, South Wales, in the right year but the wrong place, as they had been aiming for Rio. Rory and Amy saw their future selves in the distance, but the Doctor was more interested in patches of blue grass: evidence of minerals unseen in Britain for twenty million years.
Cwmtaff was the site of the most successful recorded boring in human history - a shaft had been drilled to a depth of 21 km. The drill threatened an underground Silurian city, and its automatic systems awoke Silurian warriors to stage a response. The Doctor found that these were a different branch of the species to the one he had previously encountered.
One Silurian, Alaya, was killed. Her enraged sister Restac attempted a coup against Eldane, a peaceful Silurian leader willing to negotiate with humanity. Eldane decided that his people were not ready to share the planet and activated a decontamination programme, forcing the warriors to return to their cryochambers. The humans Nasreen Chaudhry and Tony Mack accompanied them into stasis. The Doctor altered the Silurians’ systems to awaken them in a thousand years, when they would hopefully be welcomed by humanity. The drilling site was destroyed.
Restac killed Rory, who was dematerialised by a Crack in Time. Amy lost all memory of him, and remembered seeing only her future self, not Rory, in the distance.
The population of Earth was six billion. [62]
2020 (17th July) - TimeH: Kitsune [63]
Ikari, the brood mother of the White Claw Kitsune, thought the developed world had lost its way and sought to punish humanity for it. She started a clothing business, Hide and Chic, whose offerings were woven with chaos-inducing hair. Honoré Lechasseur and Emily Blandish averted an apocalypse by convincing Ikari to refrain from unleashing animal spirits of vengeance, and to instead take her kitsune and find a new world.
2020 - House of Blue Fire [64]
Eve Pritchard’s work into Rapid-Emotional Programming (REP) technology - a means of extracting phobias, either to create fearless soldiers or to cripple a target population with “fear bullets” - reached an apex at Fulton Down Military Base. Four test subjects with chronic fears, including Private Sally Morgan (who had athazagoraphobia, the fear of being forgotten about) were connected to an REP control apparatus: the Blue Fire System. The seventh Doctor prevented the Mi’en Kalarash from manifesting via Blue Fire and triggering global Armageddon, and banished it back to the wasteland between realities. Afterward, he accepted Sally as his new travelli
ng companion.
2020 - The Power of the Daleks [65]
The colony on Vulcan was in danger of being “run down”. Mining operations had not proved economically successful and the governor of the colony, Hensell, faced mutiny. An Examiner from Earth was due to assess the Vulcan colony in two years.
The chief scientist, Lesterson, discovered what he thought might be the colony’s salvation - a buried alien spaceship. He quickly determined that the capsule was constructed of a metal that wasn’t found on Vulcan and could revolutionise space travel. Lesterson opened the capsule and discovered that it contained three inert Daleks. The lure of reviving them proved too great for the human colonists.
At first, the Daleks cunningly pretended to be servants, dependent as they were on the power provided by the humans. The Daleks promised to build a computer that could predict meteorite showers and protect the weather satellites, a move that offered huge financial savings and won the colonists’ trust. All the time, though, the Daleks were setting up their production line. Dozens of Daleks swarmed across the colony within a matter of hours, exterminating every human in their path.
The newly regenerated second Doctor, Ben and Polly witnessed the Daleks’ rampage. Once again, though, the Daleks’ external power sources proved their undoing - although they guarded their static electricity generator, it proved possible to destroy the power source. This rendered the Daleks immobile once more.
Steffi Ehrlich, a future Mars colonist, was born in Iserlohn, Germany, in September 2021. [66]
2021 (12th October) - The Harvest [67]
There was political tension between Europe and the Pan-US Core. The European Council had recovered an expeditionary force of Cybermen that crashed in the Pyrenees. The Cybermen brokered a deal with the European government, offering Cyber-technology to create astronauts cyber-augmented for space. In return, the Cybermen asked for operations to make them organic beings again.
By October 2021, the “Recarnative Program” was secretly in operation at St Gart’s Brookside, a London hospital managed by the Euro Combine Health Administration. The duplicitous Cybermen intended to turn the facility into a ready-made Cyber-conversion centre, facilitating a planetary takeover. The seventh Doctor and Ace learned of the plot and triggered a termination protocol that shut down the Cybermen. The Doctor also erased the Program’s data, preventing the Euro government from exploiting it. Thomas Hector “Hex” Schofield, a staff nurse at St Gart’s, joined the Doctor and Ace on their travels.
An AI system was in use at St Gart’s, and the Wheel space stations were in operation.
2022 - Benny: The Grel Escape [68]
With the time-travelling Grel in hot pursuit, Benny, Jason and Peter stopped at the Festival of Piranha, a disused funfair (and the home to flesh-eating Evatra Wraiths).
During the 2020s, the Silurians entombed at Wenley Moor were scheduled to revive. If they did so, they remained hidden from humanity. [69] The UN banned beryllium laser weapons in the mid-2020s. [70] The phased plasma rifle was developed in 2024. [71]
2024 - Emotional Chemistry [72]
The eighth Doctor, Fitz and Trix infiltrated the Kremlin Museum to retrieve a diamond locket that formerly belonged to the Russian noblewoman Dusha. Colonel Grigoriy Bugayev, working for the Russian division of UNIT, knew the Doctor of old and aided the time travellers.
The disgraced physicist Harald Skoglund had retro-engineered a lost time belt into the Misl Vremnya, a device that enabled its user to see down the timeline of various objects, and to witness events through the eyes of anyone in contact with them. With further exertion, the device allowed its operator to dominate the wills of such people. Bugayev destroyed the device.
By now, the Moscow waste management system had organic microfilters to reprocess sewage. Robot drones were used for reconnaissance.
The novel The Unformed Heart by Emily Hutchings was published, and the Doctor acquired a copy. The word “cruk” was very rude by 2025. [73] Demeter Glauss, the future author of Cybercrime: An Analysis of Hacking, was born. The book was the seminal work on breaking and entering computer systems, including the Paradigm operating system. Mel would use the text to hack into Ashley Chapel Logistics in 1999. [74]
c 2025 - The Feast of Axos [75]
Earth continued to experience an energy crunch - fossil fuel supplies were dwindling, renewable energy sources couldn’t meet demand and security concerns had slowed growth in the nuclear industry. A large portion of Oklahoma was now desert. The Eurozone Space Agency operated the space shuttle Jules Verne. A global lottery was now in operation.
Ironside Industries offered space-tourism flights for the cost of a luxury cruise. The CEO of Ironside, Campbell Irons, had the shuttle Windermere fitted with an alien displacement device capable of penetrating the time loop surrounding Axos, and sent a crew to negotiate with it. Irons wanted Axos to supply Earth with carbon-free energy. The sixth Doctor, Evelyn and Thomas Brewster were present as Axos used the Windermere’s microwave transmitter to exterminate the Ironside mission control station at Devesham. The Doctor strengthened the time loop as the mini-nuclear reactor aboard the Windermere was detonated, trapping Axos in a cycle of being exploded over and over again.
c 2025 - The Ring of Steel [76]
The eleventh Doctor and Amy stopped a Caskelliak - a weapon of war crafted by a dead race, and which had been tasked with polluting and destroying entire worlds - from using Astragen, a utilities company in the Orkney islands, Scotland, to complete an energy circuit that would have poisoned the Earth.
2026 (18th-22nd April) - Project: Destiny / A Death in the Family [77]
The public accepted that aliens were real, as too much evidence was available in the information age to deny it. Nimrod, a.k.a. Sir William Abberton, had spent years rebuilding the Forge into Department C4 - a governmental agency that served as the public face of extra-terrestrial investigation. C4 bungled a harvest of alien xenotech, causing a widespread infection of DNA from insectoid aliens named the Contaminants. These creatures’ life cycle entailed mutating residents of a target world into hybrids, then breeding to produce more pure offspring. London was evacuated and quarantined as fifteen thousand people were infected. The hybrids consumed those too old or infirm to survive the transformation. Outbreaks were reported in Chelsea, Hammersmith, Camden and Wandsworth.
Two months after the evacuation, the Home Secretary assured Parliament - which was currently in session in Harrogate - that the quarantine zone around the M-25 was secure. The Contaminant hybrids all swarmed to C4’s main facility - the Crichton Building, which overlooked the Thames - in a mating frenzy. Captain Lysandra Aristedes usurped control of C4 and destroyed the Crichton Building and all the Contaminants with an air strike of dystronic missiles. Nimrod perished in the blast, and his death effectively ended the Forge.
Afterward, the seventh Doctor and Ace located a Gallifreyan sarcophagus in the Forge archives - and found within an older version of the seventh Doctor, who had become the Storyspeaker for the Handivale of Pelican. The Word Lord had been trapped within the Handivale, but was now freed. The Handivale transferred into Captain John Stillwell of UNIT, who became comatose.
The Word Lord made a soldier intone “Nobody can stop the Doctor regenerating” and “No One has the power of life and death over the Doctor” - and thereby gained those very attributes. The younger seventh Doctor re-bottled the Word Lord within a conflicting narrative spun from the trans-galactic Internet, but this burned out the Doctor’s cerebral cortex, killing him. The older seventh Doctor, now only a potential future, took Hex to the distant past on Pelican, then had the TARDIS deliver Ace to 2027.
S.J. Wordly was now Prime Minister.
2027 (24th June) to 2028 (Tuesday, 24th May) - A Death in the Family [78]
The British government, UNIT, the remnants of the Forge and a secret cabal of the Doctor’s former companions covered up his death in 2026, fearing the consequence of extra-terrestrials learning that Earth no longer had his protect
ion. The Doctor’s corpse was interred in York Minster, in a secret chamber reserved for Earth’s fallen, clandestine heroes.
The TARDIS, per the older seventh Doctor’s instructions, arrived in 2027 with Ace aboard. In the months to follow, she entered into a relationship with Henry Louis Noone. In May 2028, Ace had Henry write about what she would be like as his wife of ten years, then sent the document to Hex in the distant past using a Vaspen space-time stamp. This created a linguistic version of Ace - Professor Dorothy Noone - whose name enabled her (per the phrase, “No One has the power of life and death over the Doctor”) to tap the Word Lord’s reality altering CORDIS and bring the Doctor back to life. The Word Lord was liberated from the Doctor’s narrative and killed Professor Noone, but was then uploaded, along with his CORDIS, into the Handivale within Captain Stillwell. Ace and the restored Doctor took Stillwell back in time to Pelican.
A number of future Mars colonists were born around this time: Andrew Stone on a commune in Iowa in 2025; Tarak Ital in 2026 in Karachi; and Margaret Cain in Sheffield in December 2028. After intensive training, Adelaide Brooke became the first non-US citizen to fly shuttles for NASA. Ed Gold earned a BA in mechanical engineering in 2030. [79]
By 2030, the issue of thargon differentials in the orange spectrum of upper atmospheric problems was solved. This enabled the creation of stable energy fields on satellites. [80] Gorillas were extinct on Earth by 2030. [81] The seventh Doctor, Ace and Bernice visited UNIT HQ in Geneva in 2030, and picked up a note left by Cristian Alvarez thirty-seven years before. [82] The eleventh Doctor claimed that the World Cup final held at Wembley Stadium in 2030 was the greatest football match in history. The score was Scotland three, England nil. [83]
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