"If I could save time in a bottle…"
"So this is where that music is coming from."
Russell opened the door into a cavernous room, a curious mixture of wrought, riveted steel and late Victorian charm. Most curious of all, however, was a tall cylinder surrounded by four steel buttresses. Russell was confused, why did this look like another control room? If it was, he thought, then just how many different rooms were there in the TARDIS?
"Close the door, please," the Doctor's voice came from what seemed like a chasm, "In or out."
Russell could tell that the Doctor was in one of his melancholy moods. He got like this from time to time: staring off into space, sulking about, and making cryptic statements that even he didn't understand. He had told Russell, once, that he had lived several lives. After seeing a few of them back when the Escorix attacked, he started to understand why the Doctor was how the Doctor was: so many lives, almost like different people, inside that one head. Russell couldn't begrudge him a little melancholy, now and then.
"If I could make days last forever, if words could make wishes come true…"
"What's with the song?" Russell asked. Colleen was making dinner, so Russell had decided to seek out the mysterious melody. It had been replaying over and over for almost a day now, all through the TARDIS.
"If you'd like to speak to me, my dear boy, come over to where I'm sitting. Then you won't have to shout." the Doctor said things like that when he wanted to prove he was the authority. Russell shook his head and walked past the auxiliary console, remembering how some of his geriatric patients used to behave the same way, even if they were lain up with sutures and stitches. He found the Doctor sitting in a wingback chair festooned with a russet orange brocade. He was dressed in a smoking jacket and plain black trousers, always one to dress the occasion. In one hand, the strange man held a snifter of port, in the other, a bottle… but certainly not the bottle he poured the port out of.
"What's that?" Russell said with awe. The bottle, with a thin neck and broad, spherical body, rolled gently back and forth on the Doctor's palm. Inside it, clearly visible through the immaculate crystal, was a world. It seemed to be an entire planet, as russet orange as the chair the Doctor sat on, rendered in minute and startling difficulty, down to the tiniest detail.
"What's that?" Russell said with a wry grin, "is that what they call a hobby on your planet?"
"You know the name of my home planet," the Doctor said flatly, 'Use it."
"Fine," Russell was still smiling, "Gallifrey. You just aren't happy unless you can tell someone they're wrong, aren't you?"
A tiny smile played with the corners of the Doctor's mouth.
"I prefer to consider it teaching."
"Then teach me," Russell sat down across from the Doctor in an identical chair, "what is that thing?"
The Doctor looked at it deeply, fondly, sadly. He took a while before finally speaking.
"This, Mr. Garamond… is a world in a bottle."
"Ugh!" Russell groaned, throwing up his hands, "I can see that! Tell me what it REALLY is."
"What it really is?" the Doctor cocked an eyebrow.
"You know," Russell said with a laugh, "With you, nothing's ever normal. A lamp's never just a lamp, it's some kind of laser doomsday lamp that could conquer galaxies, or something."
"Have you been into Javis' old comic books?" the Doctor asked.
"A little," Russell beamed back, waiting for the complicated reply. Surprisingly, the Doctor didn't have one. He got up from the chair, putting down his half finished port, and walked to the doorway slowly on slippered feet.
"It's a world in a bottle, Mr. Garamond. No more, no less."
He put a hand on the doorknob and coughed, heavily. Russell got up to join him.
"That cough just isn't getting better," he felt himself falling back into his old profession, "Surely you have something on board that would help?"
"That's what the port was for, Mr. Garamond," the Doctor smiled through tightly shut lips, "You and Colleen just had to visit that jungle planet, you know, and I got this cough from that steamy nightmare!"
"You wouldn't take off your suit, Doctor," Russell tried to be reasonable.
"I would have looked a fool without it."
"As opposed to usually?"
The Doctor turned to Russell, his jaw set and his blue eyes piercing. It lost some of its potency, however, when he had to look up a good six inches or so to look the gangly physician in the eye. Russell remembered something the Doctor had said the first night they met, and he couldn't resist.
"You may be THE Doctor," he said, opening the door and bringing them both out into one of the TARDIS' innumerable hallways, "but I'm A doctor, and I'm ordering you to take care of that nasty cough. Surely there's a pharmacy planet somewhere out there? Walgreen nebula? CVS star system?"
The Doctor heaved a sigh, which brought another cough.
"All right, all right. Such impertinence for someone in my state, and at my age, too!"
"Oh, quit whining," Russell smiled, throwing his arm around the Doctor's shoulder. As the two walked down the hall, Russell noted that he seemed to smile a lot more now, ever since the wedding. Sometimes it seemed like he couldn't stop. It was a lovely kind of lunacy.
"I was sent to fetch you for dinner. Colleen made shepherd's pie, I know you like it."
The Doctor looked up at him and had to force back a smile to continue his melancholy.
"Shepherd's pie, terrorizing me, and keeping me from my port… this was all a very nasty plan, Mr. Garamond. Very well," he reset the lapels on his smoking jacket, "A fine supper tonight, a fine bottle of wine, and then we'll set course for… planet Panacea!"
The proclamation only brought on more coughing as the two faded away down one of millions of hallways.
"Oh, damn!"
As the coughing finally died down, the song could be heard kicking over and repeating itself again
"If I could save time in a bottle…"
The planet Panacea was constantly covered in a thin, misty fog that obscured any vision at a distance. Russell stood in the control room, peering outward at the murky scene.
"This is like London on a good day," he frowned.
"Come now, Mr. Garamond," the Doctor tut-tutted, pulling on his camelhair jacket, "That was the city I found you in, the city you were living in… why so hostile?"
Russell sighed.
"You know why."
"Ah yes," the Doctor rocked back on his heels, hands clasped behind his back, "the Harpy."
That brought on another bout of coughs from the Doctor, followed by a few light curses.
"I moved halfway across the world for her," Russell said softly, intensely, "And she took everything from me. If it wasn't for you and Colleen… I'd be a very, very bitter man."
"Oh, there's nothing wrong with being a little bitter," the Doctor said with a wink, "Still, if you must be bitter, be bitter with her, not with Old London Town. It housed you, and employed you, didn't it?"
"I suppose."
"Then be sure to direct your bitterness properly," the Doctor waggled a finger from the other side of the console, "You never can be fully rid of it. Believe me, I've tried."
"Instead, you harass one of the greatest architects of all time, only to prove yourself right that his walls would fall?"
The Doctor shot him a startlingly wolfish grin.
"Exactly."
There was a brief silence then, and yet another stanza of "Time in a Bottle" could be heard overhead. Russell kept talking, if only to drown out the repeating song.
"Well, I suppose it all worked out for the best. I found Colleen, after all."
"Yes, romance," the Doctor threw out a flourish with his hand, but he spoke the word as if it upset him, "I don't really understand the concept myself, which is why you'll find me a confirmed old bachelor until the end of my days."
"But you have a granddaughter!" Russell countered, catching the Doctor in a lie. The Doctor, knowing he had been caught, became flustered and attempted to use one of his favorite excuses.
"Bah. That was ages ago, lifetimes ago… I was a different man then."
"And so was I, when you used those antigravity rain boots to scare me half to death. What ever happened to those things, anyway?"
"They were terrible at keeping out the water," the Doctor grumbled, taking down the dark brown porkpie hat that always held a place at the top of the hall tree, "What good are Wellies that get your feet wet?"
Russell wanted to discuss the merits of boots that actually allowed you to walk over water, but he knew the Doctor would have yet another excuse. After all, he had had a few centuries to practice them. Thankfully, Colleen entered the console room, dressed as always in a simple peasant's dress. Both Russell and the Doctor had tried to get her to dress more practically, but Colleen was surprisingly adamant about wearing the same type of clothing she'd worn in her own time period. It was something Russell loved about her: she was normally very meek, very accommodating, but every so often she would find a way to put her freckled foot down, and to make everyone listen. She walked over to Russell and gave him a soft smile.
"Sorry I'm late. The laundry room is so far away down those halls!"
"Consider them shifted, my dear!" the Doctor had regained the bombast they knew him for. He tweaked a few controls, spun three dials, and mashed a button with his palm. There came a great rumbling from the bowels of the labyrinthine ship, and it subsided as quickly as it had came. The Doctor looked at them around the time rotor, expecting praise.
"There, now the laundry is three doors down from the kitchen. It's as close as I could get it without upsetting the animals at the zoo. Now, before we embark, a few ground rules–"
"Wait, we have a zoo?" Russell started to ask, but Colleen silenced him with an elbow to the ribs.
"Don't waste time," she whispered, "If I don't get out of this ship soon, that song will drive me mad!"
Russell looked at her, and she winked back. Always full of surprises, she was… it's probably why he loved her so much.
"Number one," the Doctor proclaimed, "no matter what happens, don't make a scene. Number two: be very careful where you step. Number Three: don't stare, it's not polite. Number four: if someone offers you a drink, smell it first. Number five: wear your goggles. And finally…"
He strode to the doors of the ship and stood nearby, that slightly unsettling grin returning to his face.
"Take a deep breath!"
And with that, he threw open the doors. Russell and Colleen did as they were told, but immediately realized that this was not just some ordinary fog. Their throats burned as they breathed, and whatever air they managed into their lungs was immediately ripped away. Even while wearing goggles, they could feel tiny particles burn and smart in their eyes. Russell, who had recently shaved, felt every shorn hair on his chin, every microscopic abrasion spring to stinging life. He clapped a hand to his cheek and swore.
"What the hell is this place, Doctor?"
The Doctor stood, his back to them, inhaling the air in deep gulp. His eyes were red and full of stinging tears, but he kept breathing in the massive amounts of fog until he was satisfied. He turned to his companions, both of them still shell shocked, and kept the grin going as he took another massive breath.
"See?" he let out the breath with a whoosh, "No more cough!"
"You're insane!" Russell bellowed, "this is poison!"
"Far from it, Mr. Garamond!" the Doctor shouted back as more and more fog rolled into the TARDIS control room, "This is a one hundred percent germ-hostile terraforming fog agent. It exists to eliminate every possible nasty little niggling protozoa, virus, and bacteria from the air in order to create a living
planet from a dead one. Consider it a planetary clean slate."
"But people can't live here!" Russell said, tears clouding his vision. Colleen held close to him as the Doctor beckoned them to come outside. Even the ground was pure and white, a fine sand that gleamed just like the alabaster buildings that rose up all around them. As the TARDIS doors closed, they blew a great deal of the fog away, revealing what appeared to be a city square… a city square full of the people of Panacea.
"Oh, but I think they might disagree," the Doctor mused, his eyes still watering. He seemed to relish the stinging of it all, and Russell noted angrily that he had smartly chosen not to shave, instead trimming the small beard that he had grown during his sickness. He should have known something was up, the Doctor
hadn't let hair grown on his face since…
"Dear lord…"
He heard Colleen gasp at his side and he scanned the crowd with his goggles. In the momentary clarity brought by the TARDIS doors, Russell could finally see what the people who lived here looked like…and why the Doctor warned him not to stare. The city square was filled with shuffling, hunched creatures of all shapes and sizes, swathed head to toe in what seemed like an eternity of gauze. Beneath the gauze, or where it put on thin (perhaps only three layers or so)
Russell could see thin, pink skin pulsing beneath the surface, skin that looked like a newborn, or a recently healed scar. Some of their skin seemed to be open and weeping in parts, which the thick gauze was able to absorb. The mummies walked slowly, with measured steps. Every movement, no matter how small, seemed to be done only after painful deliberation. As the mummies shuffled this way and that, going about their lives, it seemed like a ghastly parody of the bustling streets behind the walls of Cassone, carried out in grueling slow motion. Russell's mouth fell open: he had never seen a more pitiful sight.
"What on Earth…"
"Fortunately, no," the Doctor stood beside them, grim-jawed, "Panacea was originally just another space rock set to be disinfected, terraformed, and colonized. For the particularly curious, we're somewhere between Mars and Jupiter. The artificial atmosphere went off without a hitch, but when it came time to remove all the nasty intergalactic microbes… there was an accident. The disinfecting fog machines exploded, saturating the asteroid and the handful of technicians on her with an amount of germ protection unlike anything else in the universe."
"Did they die?" Russell asked, holding Colleen tighter as the fog began to roll in again.
"Far from it," the Doctor scoff, putting his hands into the pockets of his gray trousers, "Any disease they suffered was immediately healed, everything from a head cold to Hepatitis. The newborn planet started to become a mecca for those who could not be healed any other way, and before anyone could step in to regulate, the population was near one million. However…"
"There was a price to pay, wasn't there?"
"Of course, Mr. Garamond… but what makes you say that?"
"It never works that way," Russell's eyes were the eyes of a man who saw many patients leave him on the operating table, "Even in the future, on an asteroid, it never works that way… right?"
"Quite right," the Doctor gave a little smile, "You see, the inhabitants of the newly christened Panacea realized something… or I should say that the first soul to leave the planet after a prolonged stay did. There's a reason I told you not to drink anything here. The food, the drink, everything is laced with
the same germ-hostile chemicals, and in much higher quantities than in the air. The people here need it, always more of it, or else they may become acclimated, and their maladies would return. As it is, we should not stay the night here, or you may get very sick upon re-entering the rest of time and space. You see, the citizens of Panacea spent so long gorging themselves on what they thought would make them live longer that their immune systems are almost completely nil. All it would take would be for someone to remove even a fraction of the environment here and there would be pandemics unlike the universe has
ever seen. As such, Panacea has been a hot-button issue for philanthropists and politicians since day one. Those original technicians couldn't help it, they had to live a life like this, and the intergalactic community would have innocent blood on their hands if they didn't donate enough to keep them inoculated. Once the crowds began, and the long-term effects were finally seen, it was too late to call it off. Instead, it has become the premier 'get-well' spot for the rich and famous, or the terminally ill. All that you see around you are the results of prolonged exposure: their skin has forgotten how to heal, their blood how to clot. Their hair is gone, burned away, and their very insides are nearly bleached. They cannot survive without this atmosphere, this
environment… but they are no longer sick."
Colleen and Russell watched a few more of the shrouded figures shuffle about. Colleen gripped the side of Russell's shirt tightly and whimpered.
"I don't know if I believe that, Doctor."
There were a few other people here and there that were not covered in bandages: there was a Venusian mining tycoon who was trying to get over a bit of pneumonia, a six year old whose parents scrimped and saved to send her for her leukemia, and one particularly unsavory gentlemen who described in detail a disease he got at a martian brothel. Russell saw the man's pockmarked face and less than pleasant appearance and immediately clapped his hands over Colleen's ears while he regaled the Doctor with his tales of sordid love. Colleen was understandably upset.
"What was that for, Russell?"
"You really didn't need to add that information to that brain of yours," he said with a shudder.
"I'm not a child, you know," she added with a little smile, "Sure I can handle a few scary stories."
"I'd rather you didn't have to," he replied, looking down at his bride with a smile and sad eyes, "just on principle."
"How very gallant, Mr. Garamond," the Doctor said as they continued walking through what could only be described as a bizarre bazaar, "But you must realize the futility of keeping information from a woman with a cybernetic brain."
Russell felt Colleen tense up at his side. It seemed like, every time he tried to make Colleen forget about her trials, the Doctor was there to remind her. Then again, the Doctor considered her a technological wonder. To Russell, she was his wife. It was hard to tell which was more enthusiastic. There were all sorts of things for sale in the slow-moving market: clothes, but they seemed to be identical at every booth; there was food, but it looked bland and unappetizing, and there were supposed art and craft sections, too, but no one was particularly impressed.
"If that's art, you can keep it," Russell sniffed.
"You must understand the culture you're in, Mr. Garamond," the Doctor said, turning round and walking backward while still talking to his companions, "Everything here is fine. Everything is okay. Governments and individuals pay through the nose for their 28th century snake oil, and it keeps the Panacaean coffers full to bursting. Almost everything is subsidized: food, housing, entertainment… even art. There is no use for fear, because no one would dare attack such a wide reaching and pan-species charitable function… and there are armed police on every corner, paid very, very well. There is simple and absolute comfort for these people: their sores weep, their skin is as thin as rice paper, but the drugs wafting through the air keep them in a state of bliss. They don't want to question. They don't want to agitate. They don't dare think outside of their very real, and very infinite, personal comfort. Everything is simply… okay."
"It's a sin," Colleen said very softly. Russell felt his hand scratching his head, and immediately regretted it as his scalp began to sting.
"Something about this…I don't know…"
The Doctor kept walking backward, it being a minor miracle that he didn't bump into one of the slow moving, fragile mummies of Panacea.
"Well, Mr. Garamond…" he beamed with teeth that were growing whiter by the second, "would you say that something is not right?"
"This place makes me sick," Russell said, suddenly shivering in the temperature controlled environment.
"I could see why, Mr. Garamond," the Doctor said, "It's a chilling glimpse of things to come, isn't it? You've seen it yourself."
"Everybody just thinks there's some kind of magic that hospitals are keeping away from them," Russell shook his head, "I had so many patients that just demanded a pill, or a cream, or something, anything just to 'fix it.' I knew people who were taking so many pills it made my head spin… and they were perfectly healthy! Yes, sometimes you ache, sometimes you get sick; sometimes the world gets in the way of everything and there's nothing you can do about it. There's no magic drug that will make everything better all the time… or at least I didn't think there was until today."
The Doctor stopped his backwards walking and waited for Russell to get closer. He put a hand on the surgeon's shoulder and regarded him with warm, friendly eyes.
"There still isn't, Mr. Garamond, and there never will be. Even here, on this supposed utopia, there's no way to magically fix a compound fracture, or a faulty heart, or an impure mind. This fog is only good for the communicable: it can sterilize and heal, but if a bone is not set, it won't heal correctly. That is, of course, to say nothing of the brain itself. Panacea can bring down swelling in the brain, or help heal a broken vessel, but it can't keep people from being people, human and alien alike. Even at the end of time itself, where the stars burn out and the universe grows cold and empty… even there, death is death."
"Please don't let it worry you, Russell," Colleen reached up to run fingers through his hair. He turned to her and did his best to smile.
"What good is a Hippocratic Oath in a place like this?" he looked up at the manufactured sky, "What good is devoting yourself to helping people when they do something like this? This isn't life, this is a living death. These…things… they just shuffle around, buy things, watch TV… they've forced themselves to remove everything about life that made it worth living. They'd probably pluck out their eyes if someone told them it would make them better, stronger, live longer. All they want is to have comfort, to be in a womb. They don't even care if someone three planets away if dying from the very same disease that's turned them into nothing. They don't seem to care about anything. Is this what happens to humans in the future? It's all so…"
"Selfish."
Russell held his wife closely, loving her and loving that she understood. The Doctor sought to put Russell's nerves at ease.
"Earth still lives, Mr. Garamond, for now. And a thousand colonies of man still exist among the stars. None of them are as ghastly at this, I can guarantee you. The dankest, foulest mining colony is a paradise compared to this, but the people here… they really think there is no other way."
"What about Heaven?" Colleen asked, "Don't these people believe that there's life after death?"
"I don't think they want to, hon," Russell replied gravely, "When you've got a planet like this, who wants to bother thinking about God? They created this place."
"If they think this is Heaven…" she said quietly, her face ashen and paler even than normal.
"You humans," the Doctor said with a little chuckle, "always spending so much time on the subject: is there a life after death? Is there a God? Is this all there is? You're so eager to understand, but it has to be just right, doesn't it?"
"I suppose you know all the answers?" Russell said with his eyebrows aloft.
"I know what I know," the Doctor tapped a finger to his temple, "and what's more important, I know what I don't know. You see, it's more important to know what you don't know, and to know that you never will know. You humans get so uncomfortable when you come up with something you can't understand; you make up all sorts of silly stories to make sense of it all. You'd all be much happier, and live longer, if you just understood that you never will understand. Understand?"
Colleen nodded, her cybernetic brain following perfectly. Russell gave a sluggish nod, but furrowed his brow.
"I suppose you and your kind, those Time Lords… they met God or something? Maybe they are God?"
"Hardly," the Doctor retorted bitterly, "But we were smart enough to realize that there is such a way about the universe that something is
pulling the strings… and we'll never know who."
"That sounds awfully limiting," Russell regarded the Doctor with mild surprise.
"And that," the Doctor said in response, pointing upwards toward Russell's nose, "sounds awfully human."
All three smiled for a moment before the Doctor spoke again.
"Still, people of all races and planets will fight and die because they know their beliefs are better than someone else's, and people will go through their entire lives under the most ridiculous of rules, all the time for something they can't even be sure exists! What a waste of perfectly good brainpower."
"But, Doctor…" Colleen's meek voice seemed to float by on the fog, "that's what faith is all about."
"Pardon?" the Doctor looked too shocked to look like he hadn't heard.
"Faith is not knowing, but believing anyway," the little Irish girl said, wringing her hands anxiously, "that's what makes it special, isn't
it? That we still believe?"
The Doctor smiled proudly, almost glowing, and took Colleen's narrow chin in his hand.
"From the mind of a Cyberman, no less. Extraordinary. My dear, you never cease to amaze me."
She began blushing furiously and squeezed Russell's arm so hard he thought it would fall off. Small she may be, but several years as a poor farmer gave her an impressive musculature. The Doctor looked at Russell with a look of mock scorn.
"And you don't deserve her, Mr. Garamond."
Russell smiled back.
"I know."
They sojourned back to the TARDIS for lunch, as the Panacaean food never looked appetizing, even in hunger. Russell was glad to be back inside the ship and free of the uncomfortable goggles and the almost ever-present burning sensation he felt around his freshly shaved chin. As Colleen set down the tea tray, that same song began again.
"If I could save time in a bottle…"
"Doctor," Russell grumbled, "could we please change the playlist on your iPod?"
He reached for a scone, only to have his hand slapped away briskly by Colleen, who fixed him with a glare and bade them all join hands. When they had done so, the little Irish girl closed her eyes, and the other two did likewise, sharing in a moment of silent prayer before the meal. When she had finished, Colleen squeezed her companions' hands to let them know it was all right to open their eyes and break their fast.
"Sorry, honey," Russell said, reclaiming his scone before the Doctor could.
"Of all places," she replied, dusting her hands on her apron, "Here is where we should bet the most thankful."
The Doctor nibbled on a shortbread.
"Thankful that we have faith, I presume?"
Colleen nodded lamely and said with a brilliant, yet subdued smile.
"More thankful that we didn't have to eat that dreadful looking food!"
The Doctor laughed heartily at that, and Russell nearly choked on his scone. It was not in Colleen's nature to be so judgmental.
"Indeed, my dear, indeed!" the Doctor held a cup and saucer to his lips, "I've sampled delicacies from one end of the universe to the other, I've eaten with Caesar and Caphgrax XVII, I've eaten things that would turn you stomach at the thought of it… but the Panacaean food is just so blasted dull, I can't stomach it!"
He took a sip, sighed with pleasure, and set the cup down, nodding to Colleen as if to say that yes, it was indeed terrific tea. No doubt some special blend from the third moon of Jupiter, Russell thought, and then he noticed the Doctor was looking at him.
"Now, Mr. Garamond… you said there was something wrong with my… pod?"
"No, no, it's…" Russell thought of explaining the idea, but he knew the Doctor would probably have six or seven quips at the ready,
"Nevermind. You've just been playing that song, THIS song, for a very long time."
"It's how I enjoy my music," the Doctor shrugged innocently, "I will listen to a piece of music over and over again until I absolutely understand every molecule of it. It's a true appreciation, I've found… don't you enjoy music, Mr. Garamond?"
"Not like this," he grunted as the chorus kicked in for the umpteenth time, "If you ask me, it's a little obsessive… maybe compulsive."
"Obsessive Compulsive Disorder," Colleen replied offhandedly, almost as if she didn't realize she was talking, "A psychological disorder characterized by a strong desire for order, neatness, and understand. Also characterized in some cases by strict, repeated, but often ordinary tasks and routines held to with perplexingly strong dedication. In most cases, it is believed by the sufferer that if the understanding is not achieved, or the routine is not upheld, that strife or pain will result."
She stopped fussing with the silver tea set then, letting the tiny knife clatter onto the butter dish. She turned to Russell and the Doctor, her face red and her voice quiet and ashamed.
"Sorry. I… I didn't mean to."
"We know you didn't," both of her companions responded in unison, prompting both of them to shoot a curious look at each other.
"In any case," the Doctor shifted in his chair, a little ruffled, "There are times when obsessive or compulsive behavior is necessary. Sometimes, Mr. Garamond, there really are bad things."
He said those last two words slowly, with a grave bit of emotion to them. Colleen, hoping to dispel the mood, set out toast points and bid them all eat.
"Well, I'm never one to turn down a meal, no matter how much I don't need it," the Doctor said, spreading some fluorescent blue preserves on
the toast, "Riestephilian Perrenough Preserves. Absolutely splendid, like the harmony of raspberry and peach, with a touch of intoxication."
He closed his eyes and brought the toast to his mouth, fully prepared to relish the sensation. Below, his round middle seemed to leap with delight at what was to come. Unfortunately, the rest of him seemed to leap as well as a sudden deluge of alarm bells, frantic pounding, and piteous wails split through the calm TARDIS atmosphere. The toast wound up just to the left of the Doctor's nose, and he angrily wiped it away with a linen napkin.
"My word, what is that racket?!"
All formality gone, the three bolted from the table to the console room, where the integrated flatscreens displayed a horrific scene to the usually sterile and white TARDIS interior. Outside the ship, a mob of the swathed folk were beating on the doors, clawing at the wood, and gravely injuring themselves in a vain attempt to breach doors that the kamikaze of the 16th century couldn't budge. The exterior monitors of the TARDIS showed the tragedy from several different angles, each one more ghoulish than before: the fog had gone. Somehow, the air was clear, and everything was perfectly visible, though no one would have wanted to see it. Without the defenses or the hardships that a usual life would provide, the Panacaeans were literally tearing themselves apart in their panic. Arms broke like twigs, ribs cracked from the crying, endless new wounds opened up and turned the white gauze red all around the TARDIS doors, a lone blue box among the endless white. As the companions watched, the Panacaeans began to fall, one by one, to the ground. It took a few moments for the Doctor to put it together.
"NO!" he shouted, immediately leaping into action on the console and manipulating controls at lightning speed, "no, no, no, no, no!"
"What the hell is going on out there?" Russell shouted, unable to tear his eyes from the screen. He held Colleen close, feeling the tears pouring down her face unchecked.
"Something's gone wrong out there, they're starting to panic," the Doctor said, his voice haggard, "The safety has been taken away, and replaced by mindless, animal fear. They'll riot, they'll thrash, but most of all they'll die. The bodies… the bodies aren't used to it.
Their spines are like wafers, heir organs are nearly useless… don't you see? They're all having massive heart attacks!"
Russell watched another one fall, and then another. They didn't display the typical symptoms or attitudes of the heart patients he'd seen, but you could hardly call this a usual situation. The Doctor, meanwhile, was being his usual self in the times of crisis: all bluster and bombast, running about the console like a march hare, cutting a ridiculous figure in his rotund figure and porkpie hat, looking so young yet acting so old. Finally, with one last punch of a lever, Russell heard a great hiss, like steam escaping. Outside on the monitors, the familiar fog came rolling in, and the Panacaeans began to fall back into their malaise, some sitting down or laying down, whether to die or to sleep Russell did not know. The Doctor threw open the doors to the TARDIS with a dangerous sort of vigor. The few Panacaeans who were still conscious or alive in the vicinity came to the Doctor, the smiles on their faces nearly tearing their mouths apart, their outstretched arms dislocating their shoulders to show gratitude. The Doctor wasted no time in pointing the sonic screwdriver at them from a distance, and in turn each of them fell down, asleep. Russell and Colleen immediately dropped down to take care of those who were still alive, and the Doctor was left standing around a scene of pathetic carnage.
"Mr. Garamond," he said quietly, but forcefully, "You and Colleen take care of these… people. Don't let them get up, sedate them half to
death if you have to. They will try to thank you, and it will kill them. Keep them still until I can fix this."
Russell could barely make words. Already his sleeves were soaked with gore.
"But how did you… the fog…"
"I am always prepared, Mr. Garamond."
At any other time, that statement may have seemed ridiculous coming from the strange man, the man who had just had jelly up his nose not five minutes ago. And yet, there was something about the way he stood, with his average height and carrying his above average weight, his jaw set firm and his eyes steely daggers, so determined that Russell could do nothing but be in awe, even in spite of himself. For all of his jokes, for all of his comments, this strange man was still a Time Lord. Then, just when Russell was starting to feel in awe of the Doctor, it was all taken away. High above the manufactured sky, still relatively clear from the lack of fog, a massive bronze saucer, a spaceship, could be seen passing over the planet nearly eclipsing all of the former asteroid. Somehow, through it all, a chilling, cold, staccato voice thundered over all of Panacea.
"WE OBEY NO ONE! WE ARE THE SUPERIOR BEINGS! WE ARE THE DALEKS! AND THIS PLANET WILL BE OURS!"
The Doctor turned with the saucer ship as it continued in orbit, and as he turned, Russell saw that the Doctor's eyes were no longer steely, but wide and watery as tears escaped from his eyes and rolled down his cheeks, past the quavering jaw that had been so very resolutely set.
"Doctor!" Russell shouted as the Doctor sped past him and back into the TARDIS, "Are those Daleks? THE Daleks?"
He followed the Doctor into the white control room, which for once seemed not to stand out on whatever planet they landed on.
"I can't imagine a creature in the universe wicked enough to impersonate them," the Doctor said flatly, fiddling with the TARDIS controls at a dizzying speed, "get your wife, Mr. Garamond. We're leaving."
"What? But all those people…"
"There will be no discussion!" the Doctor hissed, mashing a button with his palm. On a viewscreen, more and more of the thick fog started to roll in, comforting the citizens of Panacea.
"You can make that stuff? Why?"
The Doctor rounded on him, eyes still hot with tears.
"GET YOUR WIFE!" he bellowed. Russell had never seen him so distraught. He backpedaled out of the TARDIS and pulled Colleen away from the Panaceaens, now either sleeping peacefully or sleeping forevermore. The fog was making her eyes burns so much that she could barely keep them open, but she still protested.
"Russell, what's going on? Those people…"
"I don't know what's going on, honey, but I'm not losing you here!"
He pulled his wife into the ship and shut the door. He guided her nearly blind form over near the console and sat her down. The Earth doctor then bolted into the TARDIS interior, looking for something to relieve the burning in both their eyes. He came back with small glasses and some water and began flushing his wife's eyes, completely oblivious to anything else that might be going on. When they were both able to see again. Russell finally looked back to the Doctor and found him still weeping, quietly. Russell immediately chided himself for ignoring the Doctor in what was obviously a time of need. Colleen, as always, seemed to sense his feelings and laid a gentle hand on his.
"I'm all right, dear," she said, her green eyes reddened and inflamed, but still seeming to smile, "Go check on him."
Russell approached the Doctor carefully, no knowing what to expect.
"…Doctor?"
"I'm all right, Mr. Garamond," he swiped at his cheeks with a camelhair sleeve, "I'm all…"
He was beset by a new round of coughing.
"Persistent thing, isn't it?" the Time Lord tried to force a smile, but his eyes were lying.
"Doctor, what's wrong?" Russell said seriously, evenly. He circled around the console to come a little closer, "you told me once that it was Daleks your people fought in the Time War, but you told me that both of the races were burned out of time and space. How can this be happening?"
The Doctor took a shuddering breath and looked upward at the viewscreens. Panacea was beginning to look like it had when they had arrived.
"I suppose, Mr. Garamond," he said in a husky sort of sob, "That they won."
Russell stood there, thunderstruck. From all that he had heard, from the stories and the books and all the forms of media he'd seen all the way across the galaxies… the word Dalek inspired terror in a million different languages, and for the Doctor to say what he had just said…
"They killed me, you know."
Russell glanced over to see the Doctor still looking up that faraway look back in his eyes.
"My last life. They killed me. Shot me twice. I've never felt pain like that again, and I've never forgotten it."
"But how could they still exist?" Russell prodded, "You made it sound as if they didn't even exist anymore!"
The Doctor gave one short, bitter laugh.
"I'm not God, Mr. Garamond. I can't just wipe something from existence. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, and if I were to remove that much matter, an entire war's worth, from space and time… do you remember the Reapers, Mr. Garamond?"
Russell was suddenly reminded of a Victorian England where the people drove Ferraris, and a man dying too soon, causing those terrible creatures to descend and to sterilize the wound to time.
"I don't want to, but I do."
"The Reapers would have torn reality itself apart trying to staunch the bloodflow from such a temporal wound. Nature abhors a vacuum. There are no more creatures of pure nature than the Reapers. And yet… the War had to end… and those responsible had to be punished."
His hand seemed to move on its own, and with it the TARDIS took off and Russell felt flight beneath his feet. He glanced at a flatscreen on the console and noticed that they were locked on course to follow the Dalek vessel, far into the blackness of space.
"Doctor," Russell's eyes grew wide, "What are you doing?"
The Doctor turned to him, his eyes no longer sad or worried, but instead powerful, and dangerous.
"One way or another, Mr. Garamond, the Time War ends tonight."
As quickly as the madness had seemed to come across his face, Russell saw it washed away, replaced by a troubled expression, like someone worrying that he had left the gas on. There was fear, yes, but it seemed more like the look of someone who had just realized something. The Doctor pushed three buttons and flew out of the console room. Russell gave pursuit into the twisting corridors of the TARDIS, reminded of the first time he'd ever met the strange man, and chased him through a crowded hospital. The man still had dizzying speed for being shorter, Russell thought as he huffed and puffed to keep up. Eventually, he went to a haggard dogtrot as the Doctor seemed indefatigable, darting in and out of hallway after hallway, left, right and center.
"You're not going to out-walk me this time, Portly!" Russell said, his breath coming in gasps. Finally, he turned a corner and the Doctor was not there, but the slightest movement to his right led him to throw open the door to that study he had found the Doctor in the day before. Thankfully, the record player had been silenced. He saw the Doctor's back and broad shoulders over by the chairs they had sat in.
"Doctor…"
"Go away, Mr. Garamond," the Doctor regarded him like a pesky horsefly.
"There's not really anywhere I can go," Russell said with a chuckle, "You've got me so turned around in this place that I have no idea where I am. I couldn't find my way back to the console if I tried."
He put his hands in his pockets and stepped closer.
"Would you rather I went out there, with the Daleks?"
"You've abandoned your wife."
"She understands. And she knows about Daleks, Doctor. She'd probably want to go first, knowing her."
"Fascinating girl, isn't she?"
"I don't like talking to your back, Doctor," Russell circled around, "You steer us into certain death and then run off, and…"
He saw that the Doctor was once again holding the little world in a bottle.
"That's Gallifrey, isn't it?" Russell asked after a long silence. The Doctor nodded, but only barely.
"That's what that whole Paradox Bomb was, wasn't it? Allowing you to remove your own past from time and space without wiping yourself out in the process…"
Another almost imperceptible nod.
"That's how you won the Time War? You locked it away? What is that thing, anyway?"
"It's called a TimeTrap, Mr. Garamond," the Doctor's voice was clear, but quiet, "Inside this bottle, the Time War rages and roars, over and over again. Always looping: the life, the death, the violence, the pointlessness… over and over again, grinding themselves into the dirt merely to do it again tomorrow. The massive amount of energy produced from a truly endless war is enough to keep the Reapers away, to keep them from noticing that a planet is missing from the sky and that two races are all but extinct."
"But…why?"
"BECAUSE THEY NEEDED TO BE PUNISHED!" the Doctor hissed, fighting back a cough, "the idiots thought they could win a war over time itself! They had grown decadent and indolent, they thought themselves gods. They were far too comfortable…"
He let out a frighteningly sinister chuckle.
"So…I took care of that!"
Russell just looked at the Doctor then, too frightened to speak. He always knew that the alien had power, but he had always seemed so reluctant to use it. What else was hidden in this ship, he thought, what other dark secrets were hidden beneath that porkpie hat? Russell realized now that he had made a mistake, that he had assumed the Doctor to be like him, to be human, to be humane… but now more than ever he was aware that the Doctor was certainly nothing like the human half he often claimed to have.
"And now what?" he asked with dry lips, "Did the Daleks escape that bottle…thing?"
"Impossible," the Doctor mused, staring at the world under glass, "The amount of energy needed to do such a thing would have been noticeable by a hundred different peoples on a thousand worlds. The highest levels of universal consciousness would have convulsed, the universe itself would have shaken. No…"
He placed the bottle back on the shelf and sighed.
"This could be some sort of reserve force, kept beyond my reach, where I couldn't find them."
He fumbled in the pocket of his gray trousers for a moment and produced a battered, birchwood pipe, which he began to chew agitatedly in deep concentration.
"Your reach?" Russell said, steeling his courage, "You know, for someone who claims not to be a god…"
"I'd be a very bad God," the Doctor scowled, remembering saying something along those lines before, "I burn the toast, for one. I complain. I'm picky. I tend to judge people. I'm paranoid, hateful, and pessimistic. I am, as you noted, slightly obsessive-compulsive. Does that sound like a god to you?"
Russell couldn't answer. Somehow, he actually felt ashamed.
"There are times I have to laugh so I don't cry, Mr. Garamond," the Doctor said, chewing on the pipestem and pacing back and forth, "When I put that world in the TimeTrap, I removed it. It no longer exists. I removed my family, my home, my friends. My people had become decadent and slothful, yes… but there was still good to be had. Romana, Leela, Dorothea… all friends of mine that I had to lock away. I had to remove everything that created me and take the entirety of Time Lord knowledge into my own mind to prevent the vile conclusion to a war that would have ended existence itself. I scrambled my thoughts, I killed my past… but I had no choice. I had no choice…"
His voice trailed off as he stared down at the floor, the unlit pipe hanging precariously from his mouth. The Doctor coughed again, and the pipe fell to the floor and cracked, just on the border of a Persian rug and hard, unforgiving stone tiles. The Doctor just stood there, staring at the broken pipe. He couldn't bring himself to pick it up.
"Please don't hate me, Mr. Garamond," he said quietly, but with a voice that carried well. Russell bent down and picked up the broken pipe, turning it over in his long, thin fingers before giving it into the Doctor's short ones.
"I wouldn't even know how to start, Doctor."
The Doctor gave a strange noise then, like a laugh was caught halfway in his throat and was blocked by a sob. He put the pipe in his pocket and gave a small smile.
"Tell me, Mr. Garamond… are all gods this sad, this lonely?"
Russell didn't get a chance to respond as Colleen's trembling voice came over an intercom.
"Doctor… Russell…please… get here…"
In a flash, they were both barrelling down the hallways of the TARDIS. Neither one wanted to think of what danger Colleen may have been in. Russell felt his heart breaking: if anything were to happen to her… how could he have left her alone like that? The two of them made it to the console room in record time to find Colleen backed up against the console, eyes thrown wide in terror as the viewscreen projected into the TARDIS showed the glowing eyestalk of a Dalek, larger than life, bearing down on her and screaming in that unmistakable voice.
"WHERE IS THE DOC-TOR? BRING US THE DOC-TOR!"
Colleen couldn't cry, she was too scared. The Doctor strode between Colleen and the colossal projection, standing eye-to-eyestalk with the enemy. Russell rushed in to take Colleen to the other side of the console room, marveling as he did so that the Doctor seemed to have lost any of the fear or melancholy that he had seen in him of late. He stood glaring at the nearly ten-foot-tall projection, shoulders square, two-tone spectator shoes planted firmly on the floor.
"Terrorizing women, eh? That's pathetic even at your level. Well, what do you want? I killed your emperor, destroyed your race, banished you to the madness beyond space and time… and I looked damn good doing it!"
The bombast faded a bit, but his voice seemed to grow stronger, more intense as the volume dropped.
"Return the disinfectant fog to Panacea. You have no use for it. You have no right to it. Return it, or be destroyed."
There were a few moments before the Dalek chose to respond.
"WE WILL NOT RE-TURN THE FOG. WE HAVE PLANS FOR IT. DO NOT OPPOSE US, DOC-TOR."
"Oh!" the Doctor began to revel in the verbal combat, "Getting awfully confident, aren't you? How many are there? Six, seven hundred? Thousands? Millions? HOW MANY MORE OF YOU DO I HAVE TO KILL!" he was bellowing now, so much so that Colleen covered her ears and shrunk into the folds of Russell's arms.
"NOW YOU SPEAK LIKE US," the Dalek shouted back, "APPROPRIATE FOR THE MAN WHO DESTROYED HIS OWN RACE."
"Every Time Lord on Gallifrey willingly accepts the punishment for ending the Time War, Dalek! I was authorized by the President herself to pull the trigger. All of Gallifrey stands here, with me, against you!"
There was another silence, where all that could be heard was the constant heartbeat rhythm of the Dalek machinery.
"ARE YOU CER-TAIN?"
The Doctor was, for the first time in the conversation, noticeably taken aback.
"HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT THEY DO NOT RE-SENT YOU FOR IT, DOC-TOR? HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT SOME WOULD RATHER DESTROY EXISTENCE THAN SUFFER THE HORRORS OF WAR? HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT SOME OF THEM WILL NOT FORGIVE YOU, DOC-TOR?"
The Doctor regained his composure and stared into the projection. His face displayed a sort of horrified fury: still shocked and aghast at what was taking place, but using the weaker emotions to feed the stronger and build a fire in the pit of his stomach. He launched his first flaming volley with short, clipped words that seemed to be barely escaping without exploding.
"No Dalek would talk like that. Who are you."
It was then that the Dalek began to laugh. It was a horrible sound to hear, but no more horrible than the laugh that began to overtake the Dalek voice, until it replaced it immediately. The ten foot Dalek was suddenly plucked up and put away, shown to be the size of a child's toy, controlled from a distance and filmed to appear more than life sized. The voice continued laughing now, a rich, deep voice, and the projection juddered suddenly as the controller took the camera up to see his face, to show the Doctor who was behind all this… but the Doctor didn't need to see the face to know who was behind it. He knew by the laughter.