The Planet of Paraxenophobes--Chapter Eleven

Doctor Who: The Internet Adventures - #12
"Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure on the
Planet of Paraxenophobes!"
Chapter 11--One Flesh, One Bone, One True Religion
by John Seavey

 With a sudden burst of light, the three time travelers were blinded for a second. When they regained their vision, they looked where Wil had lain. It was Wil. And it was not Wil. The body on the floor looked a few years older than the Gwilym they were used to. Instead of the short cropped hair he had taken to wearing, he now had shoulder length hair, which looked like it should be gathered into a ponytail. Other than that, anyone who had not seen Wil for a while would just assume they were natural changes over a period of time. But the three witnesses knew what had really happened.

 Wil sat up, opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and stared at the wall.

"Hm. Bit blurry. Anyone seen my glasses?"

 "Kid?"

 "I wish you'd stop calling me that, Jadi."

 "Buzzcock?"

 "And I REALLY wish you'd stop calling me that, Angela."

 The Doctor leaned in close.

 "Hello, Gwilym Young."

 Wil stared at the Doctor's face.

 "You were expecting someone else?"

 The Doctor sighed. "No, I cant say that I was. For a moment I was hoping to come up with some bizarre, vaguely believable explanation of why you could be restored to normal--unfortunately, I can't think of one. This is going to play hell with the causal nexus when we return, you know."

 "I know. Actually, I know a lot of things now. How do you stand having this many senses?"

 "You'll get used to it. Right now, though, we have another, more pressing problem."

 

The Vicar prowled through the dreamspaces of the Otherversity, occasionally snatching bits of consciousness and individuality to replenish itself. Most of the minds were beyond it now, awakened by the trauma of doing battle with the boy; but it still had plenty to be going on with. But there were still four very particular minds he wanted, now more than ever--the Four Travellers. They were still out there, mocking him with their individuality...

 But at last, now, he had found a way.

 

"Alright," said the Doctor, "I suppose your'e wondering why I called you all here together."

 "You didn't," Jadi pointed out. "You just turned around to notice us after Wil's little stunt with the glowing and all."

 "Ah, well, but I called you all here in a more general sense. It seems we've got a lot of problems. Firstly, we have to deal with the Vicar. Now--"

 "No," said Jadi, surprised at how calm he was. "Firstly, we have to deal with Angela. More specifically, with her being pregnant."

 "Fact of nature," Angela quipped. "It happens to the best of us...and you didn't exactly go checking with the Doctor to see if there was any birth control on board the TARDIS."

 "Hey, whoa. I never said I was against the idea. It just was something that snuck up on me...and finding out that the embryo is sharing space with a singularity bomb isn't exactly what I wanted to know either."

 "Well, I wasn't too thrilled about the bomb myself. But the Doctor's going to..." she suddenly leaned heavily against the wall of the medbay.

 "Are you alright?" everyone asked at once.

 "I dont know. It feels like...something's inside of me..."

 Wil smirked. "Something is inside of you, remember?"

 "NO"! Angela's eyes were wide open now, screaming pools of black. "Something like someone! Something I didn't--let HER GO!" And she collapsed to the floor.

 

And deep within her, the Vicar stirred. There was only a fragment of consciousness in here, but it was enough for him to absorb, to devour, to make a part of him. A tiny embryonic consciousness cried out, briefly, and was taken into the vast whole of the collective consciousness. Its still-rudimentary body spasmed in a brief flare of mutagenic activity, and then was gone, absorbed back into its mothers self-healing womb by auto-defense systems that were far beyond anything nature could produce. Both mind and body were absorbed. And the link between the two remained, much to Angela Ferris' deep regret...

 

Angela stood up again, her head lolling uselessly to one side as limbs barely under her control jerked into motion. "Such a unique consciousness," she whispered. "A cybernetically augmented, genetically engineered brain that has been programmed to believe it is a robot that believes it is human! A truly amazing construct, almost designed for self-delusion." She laughed. Of course, in many ways, she's right on both counts. Vat-grown, implanted and augmented until the flesh becomes more of a peripheral than a central processor."

 The Doctor stepped forwards. "The Vicar, I presume. In the borrowed flesh."

 "Oh, yes, Doctor, Angela Ferris' borrowed flesh. And borrowed singularity bomb, of course. Interesting...she fears, deep down, that you would have left her behind if not for the bomb she carries. A wonderful hypothesis, eh?"

 "But entirely incorrect. Wil, you should be able to figure out now how the TARDIS works--could you just pop off to the control room and put us into a temporal orbit? And Jadi--"

 "I'm not leaving, Doctor. Angela is...well, whatever she is, whether this thing is lying or not, she's who Im in love with. I'm here until the end."

 "Quite right. I was about to say, if you could catch me?" And with those words and a slightly incongrous, rather predatory smile, the Doctor keeled over backwards. Jadi managed to catch him with minimal effort...unfortunately, this left him with no hands free when Angela followed suit.

 

Wil raced to the TARDIS control room, muttering as he did so. "Sodding Doctor, thinks that he can do so much better than I can...sure, he's lived a more depressing life than I have. That wasn't what kept it from working! I tried pumping the nastiest, worst, most horrifying images into its head...and it just reached out and crushed me." He skidded around a corner, opened a door, and entered the control room. "I hope he knows what..." Wil stopped, his eyes opening wider than saucers. "Oh, God," he moaned, "is this what this place always looks like to the Doctor?"

 

The Doctor opened his eyes, and found himself in a classroom. The researcher in front droned on about a topic that the Doctor knew nothing about, and the Doctor knew that any minute, any second, the researcher would ask him a question and he wouldn't be able to answer it and they'd all laugh at him, and...

 "No," said the Doctor, "I honestly don't think so." He smiled, stood up, and walked out of class, oblivious to the professors repeated cries of, "Anyone? Anyone?"

 Through the door was a cliff. The Doctor stepped forwards without looking and began to fall, faster and faster throughout eternity, knowing that he'd hit the ground any moment and...

 Then he did. He brushed himself off, repacked the parachute, and continued on his way.

 And as he walked, something followed behind him. Something huge, and horrible, and tentacled; something that wanted to eat him whole, and devour his very soul, and...

 And the Doctor turned to face it. "I think you should know," he said clearly over the thing's slobbering roars, "that in my universe, usually this position is quite reversed."

 The Vicar hissed out laughter. "I know, Doctor. Angela is proving most stubborn; very difficult to process in the extreme. But I've found her memories very easily, at least those that aren't corrupted, altered, pre-programmed, or outright wrong. She knew of you before you first met--'The one that the monsters have nightmares about,' they called you. Well, Doctor...I freely avow my monstrosity. And I'm not worried about you...not in the slightest."

 

Jadi sat anxiously, watching the two prone figures, feeling helpless.

 

Wil pulled the final lever.

 

Angela emerged from the glutinous mass, her face eaten away by acidic solvents, reduced to a metal skull with two burning eyes. "Please, she whispered to the Doctor, "there must be more to me than this, please let there be more..."

 The Doctor grasped her hand, pulling her free and holding her tightly to himself, ignoring the non-existent solvents as they tried to melt his velvet coat. "It's alright, Angela," he whispered, "you're here, and you're real, and youre more than they made you for...it doesn't matter how you were created, it only matters who you are--trust me, I know..."

 "It took my baby," she sobbed. "It hadn't even been born yet, it took it away, why does it hurt so much when I just found out I had it, why..."

 The Doctor tried to avoid talking, just held Angela and let her cry without tears, without eyes.

 The Vicar tapped a tentacle. "If you're quite ready now...I'm letting her have a good cry to reduce the free-flowing emotions within her before I absorb her. Although if you're thinking of repeating Wil's little trick, please don't bother. I was unprepared the first time; it won't happen again."

 The Doctor let Angela slip to the ground, still curled up and sobbing. The bland, pleasant demeanor was utterly gone from his face, and he stared at the gestalt with an icy, vast stare that suggested no mercy and no compassion remained to him. "I wouldn't dream of it," he said with chilling politeness, diving into the gestalt.

 

Angela's whole body rocked with shudders, and Jadi raced to her side, uncaring about her past, or their future, just holding her close...

 The Doctor's body began to levitate, very slowly, off of the medbay floor.

 

The Vicar's cries shrieked through the dreamspaces of the TARDIS. "I have your memories, Time Lord! Fifteen hundred years of experience, and adventure, all mine!"

 It insinuated itself into every nook and cranny of the new universe it had conquered, becoming lord of its new domain. "I have your skills, Time Lord, your knowledge! I can succeed where you failed; I can return to your universe, to a new paradise of souls to infest!"

 It prepared to rejoin its physical shell, lying dead and empty in the Otherversity...and could not. "I...I will not be cheated of my triumph!" it boomed, as it searched for a way out of the tiny little universe it was trapped in.

 "I'm afraid you already have," the Doctor said as he stepped out of the inside.

 "How?"

 "I let you absorb me...you aren't the first gestalt consciousness that's tried to make me a part of its hive mentality. I wanted to be inside you. I wanted to see what made you tick."

 "And now that you have seen?"

 "I'm not impressed."

 

The Doctors body was now a good three feet off the floor, and glowing.

 

"Very well," the Vicar whispered, "if I cannot have your talents, if I cannot take your mind, I will simply crush you like the insect you are!" And it lashed out at the Doctor.

 "No," said a voice.

 The Vicar looked around to see a woman interpose herself between him and the Doctor.

 "No," said another voice.

 The Vicar looked to see an elderly man stand next to the woman.

 "No," said a third voice, and a fourth, and the voices became a multitude, a resounding chorus, and all the while he felt himself diminishing, being unmade, weakening slowly but surely as a thousand thousand souls fought their way free of him...and over it, he still could hear the Doctor's voice, sorrowful...

 "A hive is composed of a thousand little insects like me," he said. "Each mind, each voice insignificant unto itself, but together they form a voice that can shout down the mountainside. You had a multitude trapped within you, Vicar. All those souls, crying for freedom. And while I was inside you, I showed them the way out."

 The Vicar tried to retreat, to recapture the souls it had harvested, but there were so many free now, the product of an eon of predation, and now they were more than him, and now he was so little, and now he was...

 Nothing.

 

The Doctor's body erupted into a brief, but brilliant storm of lightning that earthed itself into any available source--the TARDIS walls, the medbay computers, even a stray bolt that lashed into the prone Angela Ferris. Then, just as quickly as it had begun, it was over. The Doctor's body crashed to the floor, rather painfully.

 "Well, he said as he sat up, "the residual psychic energy seems to have been absorbed by the TARDIS. On the whole, that could have gone much worse than it did. Now...I think we'd better see to removing that bomb, don't you agree, Angela?"

 Angela looked at him with red-rimmed eyes, still missing a part of her soul. "I think we'd better remove it quickly, Doctor. That last psychic blast...a parting gift from the Vicar to all of us."

 The Doctor looked puzzled.

 "The bomb's live, Doctor. Its going to explode soon. And I can't stop it."

 TO BE CONCLUDED........

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