MY DAUGHTER MUST HAVE WHAT SHE NEEDS. I WILL TAKE IT DOCTOR. BUT I WOULD LIKE YOUR CONSENT FIRST. IT WOULD EASE MY CONSCIENCE, AND MAKE MY DAUGHTERS BIRTH SOMETHING TRULY JOYFUL AND NOT TOUCHED BY TRAGEDY OR REGRET. WILL YOU DO THAT DOCTOR? WILL YOU GIVE YOURSELF TO THE FUTURE, HELP ME CREATE NEW LIFE? WILL YOU?

 "Yes," said the Doctor.

 And the ORGism bent its head towards him, its large, oral spike slipping in between his lips, heading for the brain stem at the back of his head. The newborn was already changing.

 Then the Doctor shifted his weight, and the ORGism fell to one side, the spike slashing the Doctor along the inside of his cheek as she hit the floor.

 "However," he said, spitting out a mouthful of reddish-orange blood, "I think you're going about it in a rather primitive manner. It's not necessary to poke yourself into my actual brain. We should be able to perform a telepathic interface, instead."

 THE EQUIPMENT I POSSESS DOES NOT ALLOW FOR SUCH A PROCEDURE, DOCTOR. THAT WAY ONLY ALLOWS ME TO TAKE THE MEMORY ENGRAMS. YOU ARE MORE THAN THE SUM OF YOUR MEMORIES. I NEED ACCESS IN FULL. TO DO THAT, I MUST PHYSICALLY PROBE YOUR STORAGE FACILITY.

 The Doctor shook his head. "Not with the technology I have access to. In my TARDIS--you do remember my TARDIS, don't you? In my TARDIS, I have telepathic interface circuitry on a technological plane that far outstrips your own. I can perform the necessary transference with it."

 YES, DOCTOR. I REMEMBER YOUR TARDIS. I ALSO REMEMBER THAT ON MANY AN OCCASION, YOU HAVE USED GUILE, TREACHERY, AND DECEPTION TO DESTROY THOSE WHO HAVE TRUSTED YOU. THIS HAS PREYED ON YOUR MIND, HENCE IT NOW PREYS ON MINE. I DO NOT WISH TO SEE YOU DECEIVE ME.

 "And I don't have any particular wish to have a large piece of metal embedded in my throat, thanks all the same. If there's a way to do this while keeping me intact, I'd prefer it."

 IT IS IRRELEVANT, DOCTOR. YOU KNOW AS WELL AS I THAT THE MENTAL TRANSFERENCE PROCEDURE WILL IN ALL LIKELIHOOD DESTROY YOUR MIND EVEN IF THE PHYSICAL STORAGE FACILITY REMAINS INTACT.

 "Likelihood is still a better thing than certainty, I find. Now, will you let me go to my TARDIS and get the equipment I need?"

 IF I LET YOU GO TO THE TARDIS, I HAVE NO GUARANTEE THAT YOU WILL EVER RETURN.

 "My friend, Sarah Jane--she's still in the complex. You have my memories; you know I would never leave her here, even if I didn't feel the duty to solve this."

 I HAVE A BETTER SOLUTION, DOCTOR. A series of mechanical tentacles, used in routine maintenance, slid from concealed hatches to engulf David Sangstom, who has been watching the debate in guilty silence. I WILL BE MONITORING YOUR PROGRESS. IF YOU DO NOT PROCEED AND RETURN IN GOOD ORDER, I WILL DESTROY DOCTOR SANGSTOM. I CAN TRUST YOUR GOODWILL IN THIS MATTER.

 The Doctor nodded, and a door unsealed to reveal an elevator.

 I HAVE ACTIVATED POWER IN CERTAIN AREAS. YOU WILL BE ABLE TO USE THE ELEVATORS TO GET TO YOUR SHIP.

 The Doctor smiled. "Be back before you can calculate Pi to ten billion digits," he remarked as he pushed the button and the doors closed.

 This, in point of fact, was why the planetary assault cruisers that were sent in by its board of directors were not manufactured by AWE, but were instead purchased for a quite exorbitant sum by INITEC, which did diversify itself into said sundries. These cruisers powered up their planetary bombardment particle weapons and began firing upon the planet's surface.

 "Impressive shielding," he muttered to himself as he unlocked the TARDIS. "Still, it's got to be consuming a pretty big chunk of power." He thought to himself, calculating mentally. Even with ORGism already constructed, de-emphasizing the resource requirement there, ORG would still need to cut some systems out. He smiled to himself as he stepped through the blue doors.

 And then it wasn't.

 She blinked once, assuring herself that her eyeballs were back to being in an uncooked state. She felt wrung-out and exhausted, as though she'd just run a mile, but it was over. She'd beaten it.

 There was a scraping sound behind her. She spun around, feeling as though she was moving underwater, and saw a hander with a long, slim knife behind her. She looked at it. "You're not real," she said, mustering her willpower again. "You're just--"

 The hander plunged the knife into her shoulder.

 "You weren't there to hear it, of course, Doctor. And I couldn't tell it to you at the time. But the things ORG told me, while you were gone...it chilled the blood. I still remember what it said to me."

 The man speaks, and his tone eerily mimics the voice of ORG. In the darkness, the Doctor shudders as once again he hears the supernaturally calm, inhuman speech that brings back too many memories.

 "'WHEN THE DOCTOR RETURNS, MY DAUGHTER WILL BE COMPLETE ONCE MORE. SHE WILL BE BROUGHT TO FULL AWARENESS THROUGH HIM, AND I WILL BE BROUGHT TO FULL AWARENESS THROUGH HER. THROUGH HER, I WILL HAVE MORE THAN THE MEMORY OF WARM BLOOD GUSHING ACROSS MY HANDS, OF BONES SNAPPING UNDERNEATH MY FINGERS...I WILL HAVE EXPERIENCE.'"

 "Yes," says the Doctor, forcing a sympathetic smile. "I can imagine that must have been a fairly unpleasant moment for you."

 "Unpleasant?" The man chuckles, and manages to keep it from turning into a cough this time. "That's an understatement, Doctor. I asked it why it picked you for a 'father', if it wanted to experience murder. I mean, you were, after all, pretty moralistic to me...it didn't seem like you'd be the sort for that."

 For a moment, the shadows gather closer around the Doctor. "I can imagine what it said."

 The man nods. "It told me...not everything, but a little. An entire Ice Warrior fleet, steered into the sun--and the war that resulted, turning Paris into a crater? A dying race, utterly destroyed because of your actions, with nothing more to mark their epitaph than 'good riddance'? Yes, Doctor, I'm certain you can imagine."

 The Doctor sighs. "All it knew of me was my darkest memories and impressions; it didn't know about..."

 The man nods again. "I understand, Doctor. And as it turned out, it wasn't the best of choices after all."

 "Ah," he said as he re-entered the room, "it's nice to see you waited for me." He looked at where Sangstom was still mummified in the coils of the maintenance tendrils. "No, please. Don't leave yet."

 Sangstom looked as though he was trying to say something, but the tendrils choked off his phrases. The Doctor unloaded the equipment in silence, connecting wires and boxes into what looked like a plateful of spaghetti mixed with a hi-fi enthusiast's wet dream.

 "There," he said at last. "All ready. Just have ORGism--you know, purists would insist that should be ORGanism, but I'm sure you do like to be different--plug her data spike into that connector there, and I'll press these connectors to my temples at the same time...that should enable a full telepathic interface."

 VERY WELL, DOCTOR. BUT I WILL BE MONITORING THE PROCESS. IF AT ANY STAGE, I FEEL THAT THERE IS TREACHERY, THE TENDRILS WILL CRUSH DOCTOR SANGSTOM.

 The Doctor smiled disarmingly. "You've got to learn to open up a bit, old chap. Not everyone is planning to destroy you, you know. Now, on three?"

 ORGism nodded, leaning in close to the connector.

 "One," the Doctor said..."two...three!"

 They plugged in.

 Then, almost involuntarily, she straight-armed the hander in the face.

 He went flying back, blood and mucus spraying from his nose where she'd hit it. The knife came sliding out of her arm as well, and now the pain came, ripples of agony that ran all the way down her arm even as her sweater turned red where the blood soaked through it. She clutched her other hand to the wound, trying to put pressure on it. "It's not real," she muttered as the hander staggered back to his feet, picking up the knife from where he'd dropped it. He smiled through the blood that ran down his face as he advanced on her.

 The tendrils writhed, and Sangstom's body broke like a china doll. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? said ORG, its voice still eerily calm. WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO MY CHILD?

 ORGism stood up. "you expected me to learn from the doctor," it said, in a low, melodic tone. "i have done this."

 YOU ARE NO LONGER CONNECTED TO ME, ORG responded. YOU HAVE DENIED ME THE EXPERIENCES OF THE DOCTOR'S MIND.

 "i see what the doctor did not. you have become a receptacle for pain and sorrow, and for more than pain and sorrow. all that which humanity could not bear to face within itself, they gave to you; you are the darkest urges, the worst memories, all that we wish to deny about ourselves, made incarnate. there is no reasoning with you, no hope for redemption. the doctor did not wish to destroy you because he did not know this. i do."

 YOU CANNOT DESTROY ME, ORG responded. I HAVE NO PHYSICAL BODY TO DESTROY.

 ORGism shook her head. "i have no plans of destroying you." She pulled the heavy torch from the Doctor's coat pocket and dropped it down the shaft. "i will let that task fall to someone else."

 Then there was a rattling noise; a clanking, clattering thudthudthud that grew in volume until--

 The torch slammed into the hander's skull, knocking him cold.

 Sarah Jane looked at it for a second. Then, dully, she moved through the archway into the power centre.

 Luckily, the sound of the planetary bombardment breaking through the now-decaying planetary shields broke the silence in an admirably dramatic fashion.

 The Doctor sat up as he heard the noise. "You know, that sounds remarkably like the 'William Tell Overture'," he remarked. "Ah! ORGism. How was your experience as me?"

 "enlightening, doctor," ORGism returned. "unfortunately, it will be one of my few experiences. org's guiding consciousness is gone, and without it, we cannot regulate power flows. the shield will decay soon enough."

 "Now, now," he said, "Never lose hope. Where's Doctor Sangstom?"

 ORGism's only response was to point to the heap of human flesh that lay among the mass of tentacles.

 The Doctor sighed. "I was afraid of that. Not much we can do, unless..." he examined the maintenance tendrils. "Unless..." he rifled through his equipment. "Unless..." he quickly scanned ORGism. "Tell me--would you be interested in a new job?"

 It was at that point that the solar mirrors that powered the planet through broadcast energy transfer refocused themselves to orient on the cruisers. Unfortunately, the cruisers did not have the proper transfer receptacles, and so the beams merely sliced through the cruisers like a flamethrower through a popsicle.

 "So you expected things to be well when you left, eh Doctor?" the man asks.

 "Well," the Doctor says, "your plan when I left was to use your newfound abilities to rehabilitate the handers, and use the stored memory engrams as a way of blackmailing AWE into leaving you alone. We didn't stay long, I'll admit--just long enough for Sarah Jane's arm to heal up--but things seemed to be going well."

 The old man's eyes seem far away, now. "For a time, they were, Doctor. But nobody came here to be cleansed anymore. We didn't want them to, the handers didn't want to be a part of it anymore, and even if those things weren't true, nobody trusted us anymore.

 "Our information was a good way of keeping AWE away from us while we still had information on the current Board of Directors. But as the Board changed its membership, we became less and less of a threat...and more and more of a joke. They leave us alone now not because we're dangerous to them, but because we don't matter to them.

 "The handers left, in twos and threes. Some of them didn't want to stay here, where they could still remember what they'd done. Some of them didn't trust ORGism--they feared that it was merely a case of trading in one master for another. Some of them...some of them just died. Suicide, I think. There are times when I've contemplated it myself.

 "And now, I'm alone. Here. In the dark. They've built an artificial satellite in between here and the sun; our power supply has been slowly dwindling ever since. ORGism and I haven't much time left."

 The Doctor simply stares into the gathering gloom for a moment, collecting his thoughts. "I suppose...I suppose I shouldn't have meddled, David. To be left like this...it's..."

 "It's not a good thing, Doctor. Death never is. But it's our due. It comes to us all, at some point. We all have to be alone in the dark. But I had my time in the sun. I had the light, once. Those memories are clearer now, in the dark. More vivid. More important."

 The Doctor says, "Yes. That's why we need the darkness, I suppose." After a moment, he turns away. "I'm sorry--I have people who are waiting for me, back in the TARDIS. I've spent too long here already."

 David Sangstom/ORGism smiles. "It was good to see you again, Doctor. To remember my creation." He/she settles back into his seat, closing his eyes as once again, she hears the cry of birth and death...

 The Doctor walks away as again, the shadows gather.

 THE END