B00DPX9ST8 EBOK

by Parkin, Lance

  In the far future, everything had been discovered, everything had been done and technology made everything possible and affordable. It was therefore very boring.

  A company on Generios VIII had thrived by exporting furniture, but the company’s Assembler robots had wiped out the thirty-million-year-old population thousands of years ago. The Rim World of Abydos had no interesting features whatsoever, and Zynglat 3 boasted a sensory deprivation device. The Skardu-Rosbrix Wars were recent history. The super-computer Mentos spent thirty-three thousand years playing Super Brain against a holographic Questioner, even when warfare destroyed all other civilisation on Generios XIV.

  The Doctor was famous in this era for his heroism, and the con man Banto Zame (a native of Osphogus, a planet that was terraformed five thousand years before) impersonated the Doctor to stage “defeats” of alien invasions, then collect rewards from grateful rulers. Banto tried his scheme on Generios I, but a genuine alien spaceship arrived and demanded the Generios system’s three greatest treasures as tribute.

  The sixth Doctor, Mel and Banto banded together to collect the Mentos super-computer from Generios XIV, furniture Unit ZX419 from Generios VIII, and the largest diamond in existence on Generios XV. The Cylinder accepted the tribute as proof of the Doctor’s identity, but mistook Banto for the genuine Time Lord. The Cylinder spirited Banto away to face retribution for a past offence the Doctor had committed against the Cylinder’s masters.

  (? The Vulgar End of Time) - Omega [1715]

  The legend of Omega had become widely known. Jolly Chronolidays set up a heritage centre in the Sector of Forgotten Souls, where it was believed Omega had detonated a star on behalf of the Time Lords. The centre was modelled on Omega’s ship, the Eurydice.

  Omega himself arrived in this time zone and met Sentia, a telepath who became enamoured of him. However, Omega’s failed attempt to merge with the fifth Doctor in Amsterdam, 1983, had left him with a copy of the Doctor’s memories and a split persona. Omega’s mental health deteriorated, and Sentia conspired to return Omega to his anti-matter universe aboard the real Eurydice, which was within a dimensional anomaly. Sentia was killed and Omega was yet again cast - along with the Eurydice - over the event horizon of a black hole.

  Two agents of Gallifrey’s Celestial Preservation Agency - Maven and the living TARDIS Glinda - arrived to preserve the Doctor’s reputation by keeping secret his eradication of the Scintillan race. They offered Daland, an actor, a job in a Gallifreyan museum.

  ? The Vulgar End of Time - 100: “My Own Private Wolfgang” [1716]

  Time-travel had become remarkably economic, and cloning technology was child’s play. An enterprising company went back in time and harvested Mozart’s DNA, then marketed a cloned Mozart (including a deluxe child edition). Around eight hundred thousand Mozarts were sold and served in their households as performers, cleaners and even baby-sitters. Each came with a lifetime guarantee, and a self-regenerating fluid that extended their lifespans.

  (=) The clones were treated as a lesser class, and many were made homeless. Such was their plight that one clone went back in time, hoping to weaken Mozart’s reputation enough to eliminate demand for the clones, retroactively averting their creation. However, the subsequent downslide of Mozart’s career made the clones’ owners treat them with even less regard.

  The clone who had saved Mozart’s life returned to this era with Evelyn - who convinced him that they must travel back to Mozart’s deathbed and restore history. Due to their actions, Mozart’s reputation became such that his clones were custom-made rather than mass produced, and were actually prized by their owners.

  The year 500,000,000 was the most peaceful in human history. The people there were unaware of war or the Daleks. [1717] The computer that ruled the Andromeda galaxy, The One, determined that the galaxy was doomed to enter a “region of Nothingness”. It constructed a vast armada of artificial planets and set off towards the Milky Way, planning galactic conquest. It drew up the Diagrams, a complete map of the Milky Way. [1718]

  c 1,000,000,000 - Doctor Who and the Invasion from Space [1719]

  The first Doctor and his new companions, the Mortimer family, arrived on an artificial planet bathed in the light of the great spiral galaxy of Andromeda. They were met by the Aalas, blond giants who took them to The One: the entity that ruled their planet and had once ruled the entire Andromeda galaxy for millions of years. Andromeda faced destruction and was running low on resources, so The One built an armada of almost a million artificial planets and set out on a four hundred million year journey to the Milky Way. It was now a hundred million years into that mission.

  The One realised that its aims would be achieved far more efficiently if it had the TARDIS’ secrets. The Doctor refused, but the Andromedans prevented the TARDIS from leaving. The One was destroyed when Ida rebelled, throwing a food plate into a vital component. The Doctor and the Mortimers left the armada drifting aimlessly in space.

  The End of Time

  “A distant point of time, an age of great advancement, peace and prosperity”. [1720]

  (=) If history had run differently, and Gallifrey had been destroyed at the time of Rassilon, the first time travellers would have evolved a billion years from now. These would have been the Ferutu. They intervened to optimise history, so that the Daleks and CyberHost were both forces for good in a utopian universe. The Doctor tricked the Ferutu into preventing their creation to save our timeline. [1721]

  Two billion years in the future, the Time Lord Solenti observed how the Dagusan sun ended its lifespan as a main sequence star. The planet’s seas consequently evaporated, even as the remaining population retreated to the South Pole. [1722]

  Three hundred thousand years before the Last of Man, the Doctor negotiated a lasting peace between the Sontarans and the Rutans. By this time, Gallifrey had long fallen. The Sontarans and Rutans undertook the largest demobilisation in the history of the universe. [1723]

  System Wipe [1724]

  Humanity had departed from its homeworld. In its absence, the surface of Earth was slated to be “flattened, processed” and rebuilt by robots. More than a century after the humans had left, five hundred factories had been positioned around the globe to this end; each contained a robot army to carry out the reconstruction. Legacy, an artificial intelligence, coordinated the operation from a black pyramid in what was formerly Oklahoma.

  The eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory visited the ruins of Chicago, and helped to download the artificial personalities living in Parallife - a computer game-simulation of Earth - into robot bodies, sparing them from a fatal system wipe. The reconstruction of Earth commenced, and incorporated some building designs created by the Chief Architect of Parallife. One part of the new Chicago had steel spires, and a glass pyramid nestled between two buildings - one shaped like a square, the other a circle.

  ? - Forty-Five: “False Gods” [1725]

  Ace and the Time Lord known as Jane Templeton arrived in Earth’s far future, when the sun had become a red giant, and its radiation was blistering the surface of the planet. They retrieved Jane’s TARDIS and used it to return to Thebes, 1902.

  The Earth Empire reached Galaxy M57, and the Catkind planet New Savannah. The Catkind had no food, as their savannah could no longer sustain them. Within fifty years, with the Empire’s help, the Catkind became a prosperous people that had adopted human customs. New Savannah agreed to become fully part of the Empire in the year five billion. Some factions refused and returned to the wilderness, where they starved to death. [1726]

  New Earth [1727]

  Lady Cassandra was told she was beautiful at a party, but this was the last time anyone would say such a thing. She became increasingly bitter and obsessed with cosmetic surgery. The person who made the comment was actually her future self - whose mind resided in a force-grown clone named Chip - who had been brought there by the tenth Doctor and Rose. Moments later, Cassandra-Chip expired while in the arms of her younger self.

  ? - �
��The Forgotten” [1728]

  In an alien courtroom, the sixth Doctor pleaded for Peri’s life after she was accused of killing Mis’Kin Karac, a chronal scientist working on quantum flux technology, on the twelfth of Mc’Arda. It was discovered that Karac’s assistant had shot him with a gun saturated in chronal energy, and then framed Peri.

  4,999,999,999 (last day of year) - “Agent Provocateur” [1729]

  The tenth Doctor and Martha went to the Milk Bar, a space station diner that the Doctor insisted served the best chocolate milkshakes in the whole universe. The Sycorax Empire was not what it once was - many of the Sycorax tribes had gone to explore space, and many of their asteroid ships never returned. The travellers encountered a Sycorax from the Tribe of Astrophia, who collected individuals who were the last of their kind, and staged hunts for beings who wished to hunt such creatures. The Sycorax had, amongst others, the last of the Ventrassians in stasis. The Doctor set the sonic screwdriver to fly the Sycorax ship to a research planet, and timed the ship’s stasis chambers to open - and release the Sycorax’s captives - after he and Martha left.

  New Savannah, orbiting Felinus in Galaxy M57, was preparing to cede to the New Human Empire. The tenth Doctor and Martha arrived as, at the stroke of midnight, giant cat robots - the weaponry of an anti-human cult - moved into the city from the wilderness, blasting buildings. The Doctor and Martha learned that Bubastion of the Elite Pantheon was removing the populations from business worlds as a means of taking control of the galaxy, and had been manipulating the anti-human cult to his own ends. Garrard Townsend, one of the cult members, sabotaged the cat robots upon realising Bubastion’s deception.

  Billions of people disappeared from ten planets - including Mere, Kas and Nyrruh 4 - leaving only one survivor on each world. On Omphalos, seventeen billion people disappeared, leaving behind only Professor Tharlot. The tenth Doctor and Martha deduced that Tharlot was in league with Silas Wain, and that both had betrayed the Elite Pantheon. The ten worlds were in alignment and created a rend in space, through which an evil primal force began to emerge.

  The Doctor and Martha were dematerialised and sent to 1957 to prevent their interference, but the Pantheon returned them. A massive battle was fought on the planet Kas to prevent the primal evil being from escaping. Tharlot became a victim of the sonic weapon he had captured, and the Doctor used the same gun to force the evil being back into the rend, sealing it afterwards. The populations of the planets were restored.

  The Doctor told the Elite Pantheon he never wanted to see, hear or read anything about them ever again.

  c 5,000,000,000 - “The Deep Hereafter” / “The Crimson Hand” [1730]

  The tenth Doctor and Majenta Pryce aided a fatally wounded PI in New Old Detroit, one of the forgotten colonies of the Proxima system. Hecto Shellac, a lawyer from Alpha Centauri, had acquired a World Bomb so he could retire and stop being coerced to defend criminals in court or - if he felt like it - take over the city. The World Bomb was a one-use weapon that altered reality, and so the Doctor triggered it while thinking of England, creating a renewed green living space.

  The renewed New Old Detroit had been renamed Redemption. Following the destruction of the Crimson Hand, the tenth Doctor took Majenta Pryce to live there.

  5,000,000,000 - The End of the World [1731]

  Earth was seen as the cradle of civilisation, and there was not a star in the sky that humanity hadn’t touched. Humanity had evolved into new humans, protohumans, digihumans and the humanish. Many other races had evolved from Earth plants and animals.

  For years, Earth was preserved by the National Trust, who reversed the process of continental drift (although by this time, Los Angeles was a crevasse and the Arctic was a desert). When the preservation money ran out, many diverse alien races, including the Trees of the Forest of Cheem (descendants of trees from Earth’s tropical rainforest), the Moxx of Balhoon, the Adherents of the Repeated Meme, the Face of Boe, the Ambassadors from the City State of Blinding Light and the ninth Doctor and Rose all gathered on Platform One to witness the planet’s final destruction.

  The last purebred human - Cassandra, who had been reduced to a stretched-out piece of skin - plotted to engineer a hostage situation to sue the corporation that ran the Platform. Failing that, she tried to kill the assembled beings, as she had invested heavily in their rivals’ companies. Cassandra’s plan was defeated, and she paid for her crimes when the Doctor allowed her skin-body to dry out and burst.

  Cassandra’s mind survived and transferred into her back skin. She fled to New Earth with a servant named Chip, who had been force-grown from Cassandra’s “favourite pattern”. [1732]

  5,000,000,023 - New Earth [1733]

  New Earth had been established in the M87 Galaxy by people nostalgic about the loss of humanity’s original homeworld. Ten million people lived in New New York (the fifteenth city to bear the name). Exotic diseases such as petrifold regression, Marconi’s Disease and Palindrome Pancrosis (which killed in the space of ten minutes) were treated by the Sisters of Plenitude at their hospital on New Earth.

  A green moon served as the universal symbol for “hospital”. Psycho-graphs - devices capable of transferring consciousness from one being to another - were banned on every civilised planet. The goddess Santori was revered in this era.

  The tenth Doctor and Rose were summoned by the Face of Boe. The Sisters were secretly experimenting on vast numbers of cloned humans to facilitate the miracle cures, but the Doctor cured the clones. The Sisters were arrested, and the clones catalogued as new humans. The Face of Boe told the Doctor they would meet one more time.

  Cassandra’s mind came to reside in Chip, but they were both dying. The Doctor showed Cassandra a last mercy, and took her back in time for a final meeting with herself.

  Drug patches were available that created such emotional states as Happy, Anger, Forget and Sleep, but in 5,000,000,029, the introduction of Bliss patches made the population of New New York fall victim to a virus. The Senate was wiped out, as were seven million citizens. Only the Face of Boe and Novice Hane were able to resist. The power died, but the Face of Boe used his life energy to send survivors down into the Motorway, and convince them that life was normal. An automatic quarantine signal warned other planets to avoid New Earth for one hundred years. [1734]

  The Cassini “sisters” (a married couple) were among the first people to join the Motorway, in 5,000,000,030. [1735] Brannigan’s car joined the Motorway in 5,000,000,041. [1736] Junction Five of the Motorway closed in 5,000,000,050. [1737]

  5,000,000,053 - Gridlock [1738]

  The tenth Doctor and Martha found millions of cars were stuck in a permanent traffic jam in the Motorway beneath New New York. The Doctor also found a colony of crab-like Macra lurking at the bottom of the Motorway, thriving on the noxious fumes. The Face of Boe had engineered the situation to protect the populace from a plague that was now gone, so the Doctor opened up the Motorway, allowing the city to be repopulated.

  Legend said the Face of Boe had lived for billions of years, but also that he was the last of his kind. He now died, but not before passing on a final message to the Doctor: “You are not alone.”

  Compulsory quarantine on New Earth was due to be lifted in 5,000,000,129, a hundred years after it was imposed. [1739] The cure for Petrifold Regression was officially developed a thousand years after the Sisters of Plentitude discovered their own remedy. [1740] Agatha Christie was the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novel Death in the Clouds was still in print in the year five billion. [1741] The time loop holding Axos was expected to expire naturally in six billion years’ time, long after the Milky Way had any life for Axos to threaten. [1742]

  The Doctor once speculated that Earth’s sun would finally become a supernova in ten thousand million years time. [1743]

  ? - “Autopia” [1744]

  The tenth Doctor and Donna landed on Autopia. The inhabitants had built an automated utopia some millennia before, and used an energy shiel
d to cut themselves off from the rest of the universe to perfect their minds. A century before, the Chronos Mission - five sentients who got through the energy shield, and hoped to invite the Autopians to rejoin the universe - had disappeared. Autopia was now a beautiful planet, full of beautiful people and tended to by robots.

  Mistress Ixtalia told the Doctor and Donna that the people of Autopia had perfected all the arts and sciences, that all there was to do was contemplate what had already been discovered. She also mentioned that intruders to Autopia were put to death: the Chronos Mission had been killed, and the Doctor and Donna were to receive the same fate. Donna inspired one of the robots - an Automantron she called Sam, after a cat she once owned - to successfully lead a robot rebellion that ended human rule on Autopia. The Automantrons and humans were no longer certain of their purpose, and accepted Donna’s suggestion that they live in harmony, and turn the planet into a high-end spa.

  ? - The Savages [1745]

  On one planet, the Elders maintained a utopian civilisation free from material needs. They survived by draining life energy from the savages who lived in the wastelands outside their beautiful city. “The Traveller from Beyond Time”, the first Doctor, ended this injustice, and his companion Steven Taylor remained behind to rule the civilisation as it renounced barbarism.

  When Steven was an older man, he encountered a Sontaran survey unit. [1746] The civilisation of the Elders and the Savages was “more or less” at peace. The older Steven was briefly Timescooped to aid the fifth Doctor in the Death Zone on Gallifrey. [1747]

  The Armageddon Factor [1748]

  The planet Atrios was at war with its opposite number, Zeos. The Atrios spacefleet was down to its last few ships, and the Atrions remained unaware that the inhabitants of Zeos had died off. Mentalis - a supercomputer installed on Zeos by the Time Lord Drax - was coordinating the Zeon military effort. The Shadow, an agent of the Black Guardian, had been furthering the war from a space station located between Atrios and Zeos.