The Story So Far Cataclysm Urban Decay So Long Legend Reality Bomb Once Upon A Memory Three Night Engagement '70s Cutaway The Millennium People I The Millennium People II Cutting The Threads The Convocation Nova Mondas Denouement I: Sacrifice Denouement II: Paradox Denouement III: Gift 
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The Convocation by Christoph Djaesson Lopez YULETIDE 2001 PORTLAND, OREGON U.S.A. It was pretty cold the day Tobias was first responsible for closing up and securing the light fixture shop, Lux Veritas. It was a very expensive establishment in a chic little avenue in northwest Portland. Tobias had worked his way up from sales representative to assistant manager. It was a decent way to pay the bills. Ever since the band dissolved almost a year earlier, Tobias had wondered where, just exactly, he was taking his life. Bad choice of words, he commented to himself as he thought about it yet again. His mind tended much more towards the active shying away from morbid thoughts. Death freaked him out. He felt he could never aptly explain how much it freaked him out. Another thing to make him feel guilty for not going to Jacen's funeral. Tobias shut out all but the very front most display lights, switched off the winking lime-green parlour pyramids, the curli-cueing and delicate little vertical halogen track lights, the retro lava lamps. He locked the front and rear exits, or he thought he did, at least. He neglected to switch off the circuit box, as per safety and conservation procedures given in his manual. Hmmm. As if on purpose, at exactly the same moment that Tobias was out of earshot of the store, a great wheezing sound rent the confined hush of the store's small basement. The blue anthropomorphic shape that haunted many a despot's dreams had materialized. "It's pretty cold out here, Doc." Brad had just stepped out of the TARDIS. "Do you mind if I make a glove run?" he asked. "Hold up, Brad. We just need to take a general look around, no time like the present. And I beat you again at cribbage," the Doctor reminded his companion. "Looks like we're in a commercial sort of a basement. Lots of ah, mmm, packing cartons. Light fixtures and shading." The Doctor crossed over the cramped space and read from a bill of lading taped to a nearby box. "Lux Veritas. Oh, Brad, I think we're in Portland again." He sounded increasingly frustrated with each word he spoke. He gave Brad an... interesting look, which was duly ignored. "I didn't think that I was still that poor a hand at steering the old girl." The barrel chested Time Lord looked over his shoulder at the anthropomorphic shape behind them. Brad was wearing a black suede jacket over his Current 93 t-shirt. He fumbled to button it up against the chill of the room. He felt a psuedo-warmth inside, however. A bit of triumph that he had finally done something to direct his affairs. All right, back home. Maybe he could get things back together again, flying in the face of paradox. The Doctor could figure out a way to take care of his own business alone. "He is not 'the Opener of The Way'. He is 'the Spirit of the Empty House'. Unless he beats the bounds, this is no concern of mine. I refuse." The voice flatly echoed against the walls as stone scraping slowly across stone. "We cannot wait any longer," argued a tightly pinched and sinuous voice, which emanated from the red-robed figure in the corner. "We must push this opportunity to open still other conduits to the higher dimensions." Though it was but one slender figure, it spoke with the voice of a murmuring and susurrating crowd. "I will not interfere unless my demesne is disturbed. Only then will I act," sighed the first speaker. This was Terminus. His form was coloured grey, as in the shade of grey that is found in dirty concrete and angry rain clouds seen on days when one is somehow tempted to explore the dustier corners of an attic. Terminus was also masked in a way reminiscent of an exaggerated Grecian theatre mask. He sat in a sort of Lotus asana, cross-legged posture. At this juncture, a third voice spoke up. "I, the Stark, see that further along the intistitial thread, you will participate. Perhaps when you see the ascension of the Aesthetic you will agree again. Let us prepare, Bizarre." This voice belonged to a very tall and exceedingly thin figure draped in an indistinct, shapeless ensemble of raiment. If one were asked to remember exactly what type of clothing the Stark wore, one would not be able to recall. At all. The Stark presented a blank white icon of a mask The luminescent chamber where the Dommervoy Loci had convened fell dark once more as the living Horror of Paradoxes withdrew back to the separate aspects of the principles they represented. Tobias had just parked and locked up his car when he heard the skittering, skipping sound behind him. Sort of like a... one of those kid's bouncing toys or something, he thought. It was so hard to think clearly as it was, especially after Tobias' obligatory after-work joint. Got to stop doing that so often, he chided himself mildly. The Dommervoy's slippery, vinyl fingers came down and lightly rested on the ex-musician turned retail manager's head. The thin mouth-line of the faceless thing seemed to vibrate and twitch, in a way that reminded Tobias of one of those briefly glimpsed things from that movie, "Jacob's Ladder". Tobias' consciousness abruptly was shaken apart as he was swept under the carpet of reality forever. It was at the moment of death, that two of the three newly awakened Dommervoy Loci were passing the car park near Tobias' residence. The Stark and the Bizarre were on their way to extract more of the powerful energies of paradox that still lingered in Portland after the "deletion" previously engaged by the Dommervoy. A strange resonance passed between the Dommervoy Loci, atavistic concepts in humanoid form, and the needle-featured mannequin shapes that represented the Dommervoy. A resonance of paradox and the suburgence of natural and synthetic compounds, vying for reaction, as it were. Nearby, sitting unseen, a homeless man who had a clear view of the scene, suddenly found himself completely and literally blind. "It would be so much easier to confine him if Terminus had helped, don't you think so, Stark? Stark? Are you listening to me?" The Bizarre was hover walking in his red-robed, masked guise through a mobile hallucinatory landscape of white plaster of paris with what looked like vaguely humanoid lumpy projections out of the ground. The Bizarre's form flickered off its perceptual-motivationally-induced effect over to another setting and continued his march with the Stark. The source of the paradox and the power that was somehow modulating it had to be located and capitalized upon so that the Dommervoy Loci could breach their way to further continuum forevermore. The two moved with celerity through the contracted neighbourhoods. In one misty and frosty avenue, all the dogs began to howl and whine in unison. There were, for some reason, some hardy crickets, possibly in a terrarium in some kid's bedroom, which began to alter the pitch of their chirping songs. "I want to go back to a roof somewhere to look at the clouds," stated the Stark in its soft, plaintive voice. "Why do you have to swan about like that?" replied his cohort. "Soon enough we shall have range over new continuum." The Bizarre was fond of stating variations of that. One was hard pressed to get the Stark to speak at all. "So, we're in Portland again, you say?" "Yes, Brad, that is what I say." The Doctor was by now becoming well aware of Brad's increasing tone of sarcasm. "I know that the coordinates were not set for Earth!" he snapped. Brad didn't react or give him the satisfaction of seeing him flinch. He had too much to live for. There was so much to do and it seemed that there was little time to do it in. "Since we're here, I'm going on my own again. If you don't mind." By act of will, Brad kept a stammer out of his words. "I want to see what's left. I want to rest for a while. I'll meet back up with you." By the posture of his shoulders and the small lines here and there on his face, the Gallifreyan could tell that the young human was in a state of extreme agitation. The Doctor was well aware that sometimes everyone had their own demons to deal with. He could not let Brad go for long, the young man was too important to the solution, but Brad did need his space. Very well... They walked down what apparently was NW Glisan Street. The air was frigid and humid. The sidewalks were a bit on the slippery side. "I remember this neighbourhood, Brad. From the time when we first met. Would you be surprised to know that I rather thought that there would be nothing left of the place?" The Doctor managed a surprisingly embarrassed shrug and something of a sheepish grin in his broad bearded countenance. "Yeah. I see that. Something's wrong anyhow. See, look over there. To the east. There's supposed to be a river and about a half dozen bridges. It's called the Willamette River." They paused for a couple of espressos at a corner cafe to mull things over and to try to finalize their acquaintance, if that is what it was to come down to. The Doctor stroked his beard and dealt himself two cards. Jack of Diamonds and Jack of Spades. He became distracted, but noticed in time that the last card he had just dealt himself for this session of Solitaire had been the King of Hearts. He wondered, also, about the India ink stain on it. A marred deck of cards wasn't conducive to the art of the play, he reflected. "I'm so sorry, Bradley. I'm sorry that your time with me hasn't been pleasant," the Doctor muttered in the most subdued tone he had so far used in his present body. "Yeah, well... maybe, I think... uh. Hold on, let me steady my mind here." Brad just found it just plain difficult at times to word things, especially since his frame of reference had changed astronomically. Terminus slowly revolved in place as he levitated. He had not shifted in the slightest since the others had left his chamber beneath the recently spatial-temporally-truncated city. "To everything there is a limit. To everything there is the potential to go beyond. The balance will be maintained." Terminus said to no one in particular. His stony and theatrical features flickered in the light he had allowed to filter in his space. It was a personal embodiment. A pocket dimension directly adjacent to that of the basement. Terminus made the lights in the fixturing store switch on again. A cold white flare lamp shone down on the TARDIS's battered oblong silhouette. Upstairs on the sales floor, lights of every imaginable type of lighting appurtenance blinked and flickered into life. It would have been quite disorienting to anyone who might have been there. A troup of Dommervoy jerkily descended from the ceiling, out of nowhere it seemed, to converge upon the position of Terminus. As much as they tried, they could not delete Terminus. For an equally enigmatic reason, Terminus made no reaction to this incursion. The only response was a deepening in the throbbing pulse of nearly imperceptible energy (or to be more accurate, anti-energy). Pure paradox flowing through an invisible vein or thread of potential reality. In each major junction of any given continuum, such threads formed the weave of relative dimensions. 'The Spirits of the Empty House', as the dummy creatures were possibly called somewhere, gave up their assault but found they could not withdraw back upon their invisible threads. They vanished. A dim spark flashed behind the eyes in the mask of Terminus. The bounds had been beat on Yuletide day. "I just need to clear my mind." Brad stopped and clutched his head. Pain. For a moment, he couldn't see and his muscles all tightened in unison. The Doctor jumped from his seat, since Brad was presumably in some distress. The younger man made a small, agonized sound in his throat as he pulled on his tangled hair, as if to let the unexpected visit of pain out. Just as suddenly, it stopped. Brad looked totally dizzy. "I need to pass out." And he did, face first into a plate of biscotti. Just for a moment, Brad was aware of a vast steel-grey plain. The sheer sensation of other engulfed him. It was a thing also intermingled with a kind of kinship. In this surprising mind's eye, he became also aware of an icon or a kind of stylised face regarding him from within the conceptual tableaux confronting him. An explosion of light replaced the image. Light that was seemingly braided and flowing outward of many brightly coloured holes. Like laces being undone almost, Brad's reeling mind remarked. "Brad?" The Doctor's voice reached out from the miasma. Brad could see him peering down at him; his hand on his shoulder was firmly shaking him. The exact memory was beginning to flee, to compound matters further when Brad tried to explain what he saw. The perpetually delirious synth player was spared having to explain after all, as he lost the Doctor's attention just then. Overhead, in the dusky sky of Portland's winter, a multitude of tiny pinpricks lanced across the field of vision. Like a thousand firework displays seeming to ignite all at once. In a way, the vortex's visible effect resembled the sharp angles of a vast sky borne crystal growing above the pair. Both the Doctor and Brad realized that they were alone. None of the hundreds of people that were in the vicinity could be seen. The buildings and other structures seemed to be intact. The shuddering that accompanied the brief but intense displacement of the vortices opening was likely to have been a partial deletion of a time line on the 2nd Scale, the Doctor mused absently even as he was coming to a decision. "Are you up for a brisk jog to the TARDIS?" said the rueful Doctor. Turning, he saw that Brad wasn't there any longer. "We shall range freely, feeding on the subnatural wherever we want to! You know, Stark, it is such a pleasure to work with you!" gushed the red caped pantomime that was the Bizarre. The two manifest-destiny obsessed Dommervoy Loci were rapt while they focused on the great volume of power that was coursing through the myriad of lambent gouges which covered the Portland sky. As usual, while they worked their skills, they did it in their own preferred style, hands down. The Dommervoy Loci, as consumers of paradox, could exist within personal pocket dimensions, or charged conceptual spaces. The terms were many, but the effect amounted to having a holographic space to the user's specifications in an area separated from the rest of the reality that the user was in, without having actually left that reality in the first place. It had plenty to do with why these particular expressions of the Loci had such an atypical urge to extend their "one continuum at a time only" limitations to other "real" universes. To anyone looking upon the features that the Stark used to mask its secret nature of equations and intangible qualities, they would see something nondescript. A mild countenance regarding a self-generated landscape of small grey pebbles. A thin bald man in grey coveralls. He looked as if he could have been simply out for a walk along the coast. Perhaps the Stark was that. Maybe in some other Island Universe or another "turn of the Wheel", as plenty of legend-cycles might say. To anyone regarding the Bizarre in his self-generated landscape, they would see nothing but a layer of masks, one enclosing yet another. The robes were clothing yet other layers. Underneath all the semblance of texture and depth was... nothing. A more rarefied specimen was this Bizarre of the Dommervoy Loci. A quality of observation, that's all. The Third party was not there, of course, on that particular occasion. Terminus made his own Loci, his own Place, deep inside the part of Earth's reality that was composed of information. Terminus was not pleased with what his other two parts were doing at that time. "Do you know what it is that you have done?" rumbled stony tones. "I don't know what the hell you're saying," interrupted Brad's more growly, yet nasal voice. "Could you repeat that please? I can't understand you. Speak up!" he added. From where Brad stood, Terminus looked no more than a great outcropping of what looked like badly weathered granite. Or maybe basalt. No, not stone at all. It's surface slid about itself like oil and the colours... Terminus revealed his true face to Brad, then. Not the atavistic icon, which was as mutable as the patterns in dirt, or the shapes of clouds. The direct communication of the being's intrinsic nature. He showed him the Big Picture. This exchange, however, was not of a warm mentor and pupil relationship by any means. It was prickly and fierce, almost like rival members of a canine pack. Confused referential images kept floating to Brad's attention. For a while, he was nothing but the barest suggestion of a presence to himself. A nearly complete state of selflessness engulfed him and he did not care for it one bit at all. No sir, or madam as the case may be, Bradley Nathaniel DeMars did not like the sound of what he was hearing, so to speak. But he'd think about it later. From the perspective of Terminus, he found that he could not keep Brad in his sight for very long. The man somehow wriggled from his grasp. Separately, each of the Dommervoy Loci had re-manifested into their physical forms and once again travelled in Portland on foot. "Well?" asked the Stark. Terminus barely spared the Stark a glance. "Soon." "Well, I mean, we've got to stop them, right?" asked the very weary and leery Bradley N. DeMars. "Where is all this sudden concern coming from then, hmm?" asked the suspicious Doctor. "As much as I'd like to cut out of here and be on my way, I see I can't just do that. See what I'm saying is that my hands are tied, right? Those guys out there are ripping it up on the space Astroturf vortex with their personal heinous anus voids, right? And your job is to make them stop." Brad had hit upon the Doctor's main point of pride with that last bit. "Somehow I get the feeling that when I get to the bottom of things this time, I'm likely to get a larger surprise than what I bargained for." The Doctor spoke a bit more sharply than he intended but chose to let it ride. He cut off further conversation by busying himself with fine-tuning some of the scanner controls on the TARDIS' main console. "How could I have been so blind?" the Doctor shouted without warning. He ran over to an obscure looking observation device of some sort, regarded some printed material that was spilling out from a port, and looked up gravely. "The vortices that opened up just then have penetrated a nearby alternate dimension and there is nothing I can do to stop the breach." The big man looked completely devastated. "The damage is irreversible. Only the natural elasticity of the plenum surrounding the breaches, or the regenerative ability of the universe, will matter now." "Time heals all," Brad muttered flatly. With the flourish only the Doctor's meaty finger could deliver, the scanner screen lit up to reveal the interior of the basement of Lux Veritas, avant-interior light fixturing boutique. "So we left and came right back again? Nice work. Think I will take a hike after all. I'll just be grabbing my coat now. Nothing personal, you know. I'll give you a umm... call or something. When I'm back on my feet." Brad tripped over himself to get to the handle with the palm sized red knob that opened the door. The White Guardian sat at ease in his imaginary wicker chair with his imaginary drink glass. From where he imagined himself to be sitting, he could see the chaotic trail by which the Dommervoy Loci exited Earth's continuum. "You don't come back, you hear?" muttered the white suited old granddad White Guardian. Even the Guardian he was being hopeful. Things were running away with themselves. He settled back into his chair and sipped his drink, thinking of a few more things he'd need to have the Doctor attend to before the curtain closed on this particular act. Before it was too late. "Brad! Wait, will you?" The Doctor got Brad to pause just long enough for him to engage a small toggle switch on the console. "I just need to turn on the dampening field and flush out something here." Brad sulked out the doors and into the basement. There was the sound of movement behind him and he spun about only to be met with by what felt like a sledge hammers blow. Back on the ground, but at least this time he could see what was coming. But it looked like the stony grey guy wasn't doing so well anymore. A decently sized gaggle of Dommervoy was mulling about animatedly around the TARDIS. Special emphasis, apparently, was being paid attention to Terminus' presence. “What do you want from us?" screamed the scrawny human. The Terminus didn't quite register that as an appropriate question and snarled wordlessly. His sense of Balance had been rendered into a sorry mess. Now his opportunity, as well, to leave the paradigm was lost with the inevitable closure of the rifts. They would remain open for a while yet, on the other hand. Instead of feeling another blind panic rise in his craw, Brad felt a blind... something like a full-on berserk explode inside his middle. Oh shit, I'm going to have a heart attack, his mind squawked at itself. But then his hand found the chainsaw that was lying innocently on a nearby workbench. He pulled the ripcord and the saw buzzed into life. Noisy, noisy life, that had the machine leaping to and fro in Brad's numb fingers. A funny cheese-eating grin consumed his face. Terminus rose up to his full height and looked like he might simply fall face-first onto Brad and crush him. Brad blinked and suddenly Terminus was not there. Come to think of it, the tick tock creatures were absent as well. Something must have made them disappear again. Obviously, thought Brad. He was in a near mindless state of fervour as he struck into the corporeal frame of Terminus. Sparks flew in every direction, but they had odd copper tinges. Then Terminus struck Brad again, who squeezed the chainsaw grip tighter and ran up the basement steps and into the main sales floor of Lux Veritas. Every light in the house was on. A blazing cacophony of lighting tones, textures, flavours, accents, and modes rendered Lux Veritas into an unbearable place for humans and Time Lords alike. Terminus shifted his body, contracted his flesh, and followed Brad up the stairs. Some other force was blocking the main array of his abilities. He grabbed the other chainsaw and met his opponent's unspoken challenge. Meanwhile, within the TARDIS, the Doctor had done another thing he regretfully chided himself over, which was to jam the door control. Helplessly, he found himself in the position of having to watch his companion fight like an animal in an enclosed space full of fragile electrical appliances... with a chainsaw. Blow for blow, so far Brad and Terminus had managed parry each other's attempts to saw through to their respective victories over a nebulous matter of quantum resonances. Unfortunately the sparks from the chainsaws (and the fact that Terminus had cut through quite a few live electrical wires) had ignited a vigorous blaze in front of the cash register. With sulphury rubber stenches and billowing clouds of insulation, Lux Veritas had become an inferno. Popping of electricity and roaring power tools filled the small Portland neighbourhood with an uncommon din. The intensity of the heat must have finally snapped Brad out of his berserker state. His enemy's saw barely nicked Brad's bicep and he winced back. Blood wept from the wound and he dropped his improvised weapon. The flames became steadily more violent and at that moment, a high volume of ceiling tiles and other materials fell down. Terminus was no where to be seen, presumably struck by the debris. The conflagration continued as Brad made his way through the broken front door. The alarm finally sounded faintly from within for a moment before the intense heat melted the mechanism. Sooty, bloody, and sick from adrenaline, Brad was appropriately stunned to hear the familiar whomping noise of the TARDIS engines nearby. "Under the circumstances, I think you might want to come with me for just a bit longer," the Doctor called out. Brad shrugged and said, "What the hell. All right, but you have to drop me off somewhere sane when this is over." As if on cue, the corner of Northwest Glisan Street and Northwest Eighteenth Avenue became full of people again; coffee-drinkers, a gothic girl smoking a clove, casually dressed and upwardly mobile types, a traveller on his way to the hostel on the other corner next to the parking lot. Each one of them looked awfully distraught. All across the somewhat diminished Portland the vortices continued to open, as creatures from possible realities entered the new universe. The first metal foot stepped onto Earth... 
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