Disclaimer - I don't own Doctor Who.
I've had this in mind for a while since I have wanted to write something inspired by the Unbound audio dramas of Doctor Who. And I've wanted to celebrate the new series with Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor.
My thanks to my friend Marcus S. Lazarus. Thank you for putting up with my constant messages and asking for advice, but thanks for the contained nexus idea.
Feedback will be brilliant, thank you.
Tampering with History.
-Vincent Van-Gogh died in 1890. He became intoxicated and he started a brawl in his local drinking place, known on the planet Earth (Sol 3, Mutter's Spiral galaxy), and he got stabbed in the chest…..
"No, no, no, that's not right," the Doctor leaned back with a sigh in his chair, though he cast a wary look around him; the archives were massive and the various Time Lords who came here were too busy focused on their own projects that they didn't see or were aware of what he was doing, and he wanted to keep it that way.
After his brief exclamation, the Doctor leaned forward again and read the rest of the tempograph report on Vincent Van Gogh. It was just as he imagined it would be, with the artist's death seen as the result of the drunken brawl, the humans in the village who had nothing good to say or think about the artist had simply decided to destroy all of his work. In that timeline, it would be lost forever.
He could not and would never allow that to happen - he had seen Van Gogh's work, and he loved it. Most human and alien artists preferred being linear with their work, but Van Gogh's work was colourful, chaotic…. but the Doctor loved it, he loved aliens who thought out of the box.
Not like the Time Lords.
Pushing that out of his mind, the Doctor focused on his work, and he stared thoughtfully at the report, reading it once more so he had it in his mind before he checked it to see if the death was a nexus point or a fixed point, and to his relief the death of Van Gogh was a nexus point and that this report was just something taken from a potential timeline. It should be easy to alter. The Doctor's hands flashed over the controls to input the timeline he wanted the most into the system with practiced ease. Soon the timeline he'd programmed in would be the right one.
What he was doing was considered illegal by Time Lord law. Designing time had been banned by his people centuries ago. In theory, designing history was safe if you followed the timeline and made careful adjustments here and there while you took care not to alter it too much.
In the eyes of the Time Lords, the Designers were just a bunch of careless and dangerous criminals who played games with history, but what made it worse was they did it for money that was given to them by even bigger idiots who didn't understand the potential damage that could be done by meddling in time. With that point of view, the Doctor could see why it made sense for the Time Lords to simply ban the profession and crack down hard on their activities. It wasn't difficult for them to do, all they needed was to find a time period where they'd caused some damage and then track it back to the source.
The Doctor didn't know what had happened to the Designers beyond the fact their profession been banned, like all the Time Lords he knew what they did, how they did it, and what the potential damage could be if it was done improperly but beyond that he was unsure if the Time Lords had thrown their timelines into reverse to make it easier for them to reverse the damage they'd caused. The Doctor didn't know if some of the Designers had somehow managed to escape the net or not and were secretly continuing their profession but while the Time Lords harshly forbade Designing history, the Doctor had learnt that his people practiced it themselves. They were just better at it than others. But then again, if you can make the rules, then you can alter them to fit your needs, and that was what the Time Lords did.
They created and enforced the Laws of Time, and if anyone broke those laws then they'd be punished, but if the High Council ordered some kind of alteration then the Time Lords would mitigate the changes in the timeline.
Hypocritical, but unlike the Designers from outside of Gallifrey, who didn't have the Time Lord's abilities to see time as more than something that just came and went, the Time Lords knew exactly how to program the timeline in order to make it work. They knew how to program the lives of different people to ensure their desired timeline came to pass, and they could see the patterns that came with the right one and followed it through. They didn't just alter an event and blink in surprise if the outcome was not what they planned for or expected.
The Doctor had found out that the Matrix could be used to Design history, and the changes could be made on a subtle level without the Time Lords being aware. He wasn't stupid, he knew if he performed a really big change, the Time Lords would be alerted and then he would be traced without any trouble, and then he would either be vaporised or exiled; with all the political chaos on the planet caused by Magnus and the Master, two of his oldest friends from the Academy, the Gallifreyan justice system was a mess. He had discovered this shortly after he had become a Panopticon archivist in order to escape the misery caused by Rallon and Millennia's families for their deaths, and now he had been manipulating and tampering with history for the last few decades.
The Doctor looked up another tempo graph that he thought he could tweak, but just as he was entering the information he wanted to include, the warning system he had rigged began to glow a subtle red in warning. The Doctor cursed silently under his breath, realising what was happening.
The Time Lords had begun to detect the change in history, and now they were tracking down the culprit. The Doctor instantly triggered the cut-off switch, hoping that the Time Lords had just detected the change in history occurring on Gallifrey somewhere, but not knowing where it was taking place.
He leaned back again in his chair. That had been too close, he thought to himself.
That was not the first and only time the Time Lords had become aware of his activities, of course, they had tried to pick him up before several times in fact. The last thing he wanted was a repeat of when he had tried to alter a piece of Mondas' history; the Time Lords had come dangerously close to finding out who he was.
When he was at the end of his shift in the archives, the Doctor logged out of the computer after wiping the memory of what he'd done from the system, and he left the archives and headed back to his apartment. When he arrived he noticed the com-bank indicator flashing green, and he closed his eyes and mentally prayed that it was the message he wanted the most.
"Computer, what messages do I have?" the Doctor asked.
"Five. Three messages from the Master, one message from the Head of the Panopticon Archives, one from Temporal control-," the computer reported before the Doctor interrupted. "Stop," he said, "display message from Temporal Control."
As he waited for the computer to load the message up to play it, the Doctor hoped it would be the good news he needed. To his disappointment, it was not an audio or visual message. The computer just displayed a blank white screen showing a stream of Time Lord text. The Doctor's eyes scanned the message, and with each word, he became angrier. By the time he had reached the end of the message, he was shaking with rage.
The Doctor had applied for a position in Temporal Control in order to get him out of the boring routine of the archives even if the archives gave him, but he had wanted to gain better scope for his work manipulating the timelines, and the technology and the resources in Temporal Control would have helped him because it took time for his limited connection to the Matrix from the Panopticon archive to make the necessary changes. With the resources of Temporal Control, it would be easy for him to see the changes to space/time occur.
But his application had been denied. This was not the first time this had happened, he had even hacked the system of various offices he had applied to work for over the years when they had told him they would not be taking him on. The positions were sometimes not filled by anyone. They had been pressured into not taking him on, and the Doctor a good idea who was responsible. Rallon and Millennia's families both had the clout and the wealth to make anyone do what they wanted, it would not have been difficult for them to both find out whom he had applied to and then they would move in and put an end to it by denying him.
Was this how it was going to be for the rest of his life, for all of his upcoming regenerations, going through life in a single job without any chance of becoming a better person all because he had made a foolish mistake and dragged two of his friends through the universe to see it, only for them to die?
Were Rallon and Millennia's families going to continually punish him for his mistakes? The Doctor blew out a breath as he tried valiantly to control his temper and think about what he could do about this mess. His hatred and resentment of the Time Lords had grown over the decades he had been in the archives, constantly sending out one application after another and getting the same message of refusal over and over again. On the one hand, the Doctor had the Master and Magnus's little revolution, on the other, he had the Time Lords. Both of them had pressured him over the years. The Master and Magnus had both been trying to rope him to join them as if his information and his subtle tweaking of the timelines wasn't helping enough. Neither of them knew how he'd come by his information, so he thought though he had the feeling that they'd suspect it quickly enough sooner or later if they hadn't already.
The Master's messages were probably to 'persuade' him into joining, but the Doctor wasn't interested in joining the revolution. He didn't want to join because he genuinely didn't care about who ruled Gallifrey. Perhaps if the situation was different, then perhaps he would have joined long ago, but the Doctor had discovered the joys in manipulating time. Really, political intrigue was so one-dimensional in that case. Besides, he had looked into the future projections thanks to his admittedly illegal access to the Matrix, and he knew that there was no way the Master could win.
But...Although at the moment, it was tempting…. the Doctor wanted to do something, anything, to make life on Gallifrey better than what it was already. If his friends could pull it off without falling victim to the same mistakes Morbius had made, then Gallifrey would be irreversibly changed.
But the Doctor was tired of it all, he'd had enough of the Time Lords and the never-ending revolution, and he was tired of the problems caused by Rallon and Millennia's families. He was tired of the Time Lord's efforts to find him, but then he had found himself frustrated with a great deal on Gallifrey.
He wanted to get out. The Doctor had been considering leaving his home planet for a long time now. He didn't have anything on the planet anymore, his friends were constantly making schemes to take the planet over when really all they were doing was setting the stage to make things worse. His family wanted nothing to do with him either. But most of all, he had become tired of the never-ending restrictive nature of Gallifrey, and of the Time Lords. Maybe he should have followed the example set down by Drax long ago and just leave the planet, instead of staying behind for a bit longer to focus on his experiments. Not that they were going anywhere, he reflected, since there was only so much he could do without getting himself caught.
The Doctor walked over to the couch and sat down for a moment, thinking, and then he leaned forward to grasp the small computer on the table. It took him a few minutes to find the right information he was looking for before he stood up and closed the computer when he was suddenly hit by a wave of inspiration, carefully pulling out of a transcendental pocket in his robes the antique human pocket watch he carried there.
The watch had been a gift from Millennia during one of their trips to Earth, a present in recognition of his fascination with temporal science. For a moment the Doctor found himself lost in the reflection he saw in the crystal-clad face. He both loved and hated the watch - loved it because it was all he had to really remind him of Rallon and Millennia before their deaths, and because he remembered how furtive Millennia had been when she had returned to the TARDIS they'd stolen to go on a roundabout trip through space and time before they'd encountered House, and how she had worked to give the watch a stronger molecular structure so it was waterproof and impact proof, and had been given a stronger power source.
He hated it because the watch reminded him of the good times before Rallon and Millennia had died and how their deaths affected him now.
The Doctor pulled himself together in a second and looked again at the watch before he walked out of the room and to another part of the apartment to one of the side rooms.
000000000000000000000
The Master was not happy. The Doctor was not responding to his messages again. It was becoming something of a daily occurrence, and the Master was becoming tired of it all. He needed the Doctor's help and support, the more of their people involved and they could finally do away with the old order of the Time Lords and make Gallifrey great again.
Their support was high, specifically the younger generation of Time Lords, some of them were only with the Master and Magnus because as the next generation they felt they had the right to shake the foundations of Gallifreyan society. Others just wanted excitement, but the Master didn't care about them. The more people they had on their side, the easier it would be to change Gallifrey. It was amazing just how many people wanted to make some much-needed changes to Gallifrey in order to rediscover the greatness of their species, but the Master knew it was not going to be simple.
Granted, it would have been easier if they had greater support in the High Council, but ever since Morbius had shaken things up, many of the Time Lords on the High Council was reluctant to show support, though they did have it.
But the Doctor had refused to help the revolution besides supplying him and Magnus with information, but the Master didn't just want the information even though it had helped the revolution move along, he wanted his old friend to be a part of the revolution. Seriously, why did no-one from their old gang, the Deca want to be a part of the revolution?
The Rani had never been interested in politics, only with her chemistry sets and her mice which she had turned into monsters (it still made him laugh at the amount of chaos she had made), but now she had been exiled from Gallifrey. All she had done was mutate some of her mice and they'd gone on a rampage, took a chunk out of the Lord President and ate his cat.
The Master didn't know what had happened with Drax. But if they had an engineer on their side, then they could do anything if things went that way, but as much as the Master would like to make the Time Lords cower at the threat of violence he knew it would be much easier if they carried out a calmer, more peaceful revolution. Morbius had done the same, but his madness and power-hungry attitude had made him make mistakes. The Master and Magnus had both sworn never to repeat the mistakes of Morbius, and so far they had managed, though their activities were becoming more and more extreme. But sometimes you had to be harsh. The Master and Magnus knew that. It was a fundamental fact they needed to be harsh to prove to the population they would be serious about their leadership.
But the Doctor….
The Master wanted his old friend to be a part of the revolution, if they succeeded then they could change Gallifrey forever, and he wouldn't be forced into a tedious job. Surely the Doctor didn't want to be stuck in the archives for the rest of his lives? He had every reason to be a part of the organisation; he had been shoved into a dreary job because he had gotten on the wrong side of two old families, but if he were a part of the revolution he could finally be something than what he was. Instead, the Doctor seemed indifferent, and the Master was unsure of what else he could do because he had used up every method of persuasion that he knew in order to get the Doctor to see he could get justice.
I have considered this for some time, the Doctor thought to himself, but I was too determined to continue those experiments with the Matrix and get into Temporal Control and really exercise my knowledge of interfering with history.
Very well. He had accepted the fact he was not going into Temporal Control, and as much as he regretted it there was not much he could do. At least, not on Gallifrey...
The side room of his apartment was empty except for the tall, large, gleaming white cylinder standing in the centre of the room. The Doctor smiled at the cylinder as it stood in there. He had had the cylinder in his rooms for a few years now when he had decided that his time on Gallifrey was coming to an end. When he had first started Designing history and had run the risk of being caught out by the Time Lords, the Doctor had decided to have a means of escape. Once he had found it, the Doctor realised that he felt much more comfortable because he had a safety net. What was better was he had the permanent means of escaping from his homeworld any time he chose, but he had stayed on Gallifrey because he had wanted to continue with his studies on the Matrix.
This was his TARDIS. If there was one thing the Doctor had come to accept, it was he was no longer comfortable living someplace and not have a pre-determined way of escape. He'd purchased it from a secondhand TARDIS bay after he'd come close to being caught by the Time Lords shortly after he had begun Designing history and meddling with time with the Matrix; at the time, his thought process had been with the revolution on and the High Council's diseased and corrupted flesh becoming more clear as the group organised by the Master continued to take potshots at their policies the laws of Gallifrey were changing, becoming more hardline. Typically time meddlers who interfered or Designed historical events and people who hacked in the Matrix were exiled from Gallifrey, but nowadays that was no longer a possibility.
The Doctor had asked himself If they punish crimes that are considered beneath their notice, then how would they punish crimes that they really take an already aggressive stand against?
Thinking of the High Council and the current climate made the Doctor grimace. He had no doubt in his mind the Master would find out about the recent rejection, though the Doctor had no idea how he was able to find that out unless of course, the other Time Lord had spies in positions of power. The Doctor could well believe that, but truthfully he didn't care.
Still, having his TARDIS in his apartment allowed him to rest more easily since he knew that if his people found out about what he was doing, then he would have the means to escape instead of running around all over the Capitol towards one of the conventional places the TT capsules were housed. The door chime went, and the Doctor jumped in surprise but he recovered quickly. "Of please, no visitors," he whispered, and he quickly left the room and he reactivated the perception filter he had set up on the apartment to hide the TARDIS. It was illegal to house a TARDIS anywhere except for a dry dimension dock, but the Doctor did not care about the law. After closing the door and heading over to the front door, the Doctor took a second to compose himself before he opened the door. When he saw who was standing on the other side, he held back the urge to sigh.
"If you are here to talk to me about the revolution, don't waste your breath," the Doctor said to the Master as the other Time Lord walked into his apartment, but the Doctor stood still and watched the other Time Lords' reaction. The Masters' expression was as suave as ever as he looked around the apartment before turning to face his friend as the Doctor shut the door. "That was on my mind, but I was wondering how you were?"
The Doctor knew the Master well enough to know for certain he planned to ask him questions that would lead to the suggestion he should join the little revolution, but he decided to play along for now. "I was depressed with the rejection," he replied, "but now I am moving on."
"Oh?" the Master seemed surprised to hear that, and it showed on his face. "So what do you plan to do now?"
The Doctor decided to be blunt. "I want to join the revolution."
The Master gazed up at the Doctor in surprise. "Doctor?" he whispered, unable to believe what he had just heard. But the Master knew that the Doctor was telling him the truth. The other Time Lord was broadcasting it nice and clear for him to detect.
"I'm serious, Master. I've changed my mind." The Doctor sat down opposite the other Time Lord and looked up to meet the Masters' gaze squarely. "You and I have been friends for a long time, Master. I owe it to you to be completely honest."
"I would not expect it to be any less."
Nodding, the Doctor was silent for a moment as he collected his thoughts and decided on the right approach. Finally, he drew a deep breath and began to speak. "I am tired of Gallifrey. When Morbius was gathering support for his reforms, I was one of many who supported him. He was right; Gallifrey was old, stagnant. Our people were decadent. We were standing still rather than moving onwards."
The Master nodded absently. One of the many slogans other similar groups had said something along those lines. Morbius only took it a step or two further. As if reading his mind, which was impossible since the Doctor was not looking into the Master's mind and the other Time Lord had his mental barriers up, the Doctor went on with his explanation. "That is your reason for starting the revolution, my reason for joining is simple. Revenge. I have been pushed around too often and for too long, Master," the Doctor said, his eyes blazing with anger as he remembered each and every single moment he was not allowed to get on with his life.
"And now you hope to make the families of Rallon and Millennia pay for it?" the Master asked to clarify the point.
"Yes, and to make the High Council pay for allowing it to happen," the Doctor said without giving too much away about his other long-term plans. The Master inclined his head in thought as he turned it around in his own mind. "I think we can arrange that," he said casually, "it would be good to have you around."
The Doctor drew a breath. "I think I can do more for you than you can imagine at the present time," he said.
The Master looked at him in polite surprise, making the Doctor sigh mentally. The Master had either probably heard it all before, or he genuinely believed that he had all the assistance he could take. "What can you do for us?" he asked finally, making the Doctor bristle as he felt that his old friend was humouring him like a child, but he let it slide as he drew a deep breath, though the Master was going to be in for a surprise. The Doctor had never told anybody what he could do before; the Time Lords may know of what he was doing if their attempts to track him down said anything, but he had never voiced a true confession before.
"I can Design a desirable outcome for the revolution," the Doctor said.
He was right. The Master was openly surprised. The expression on his bearded countenance was so comical that the physically older looking Time Lord nearly laughed out loud, but he restrained himself just in time.
"How?" the Master's voice was quiet before he asked in a louder voice. "How can you Design the timeline of Gallifrey, the paradox barriers-?"
The Doctor held up his hand. "The paradox barriers will prevent larger attempts to alter history, I grant you. But you remember your temporal physics classes at the Academy, hmm?"
The Master nodded, though he visibly bristled at being treated like a student at the Academy. "Yes," he replied, but the Doctor could definitely see the other Time Lord trying to process the question to see where it led and what temporal physics classes had to do with it before he worked it out for himself. "Ah, I see," the Master's eyes were bright with inspiration. "Gallifrey's transduction barriers, paradox shields and temporal fields have made the planet a contained nexus."
"Precisely. As you recall from the Academy, a contained nexus is similar to a fixed pointed in time and space, where history cannot be altered, but a contained nexus is something very similar to a fixed event, but it is a location in time and space that has a larger impact on the events to come in the universe, but it can be altered as long as you are aware of the consequences. There are many locations in the cosmos where you would find a contained nexus, of course; but Gallifrey is the largest. Our mastery of time travel and the way our planetary shielding puts our world out of sync with the universe has given us the largest contained nexus point we are ever likely to see."
By now the Master had assimilated the information and what his old friend could provide for the revolution. One of the Master's specialities at the Academy had been temporal physics, and he believed he had seen a flaw. "But the problem with a contained nexus is you would need to use a time machine of the highest quality to affect the changes, so unless you have a TARDIS at your disposal-."
"Or you have access to the Matrix itself, then you can cause changes to the timeline. The Time Lords use the Matrix to cause minute changes all the time; I've seen them do it more than once," the Doctor interrupted the Master, he had no desire to tell the Master about the TARDIS which was only a few feet away. That TARDIS was his lifeline in case things went truly and badly wrong.
"You have access to the Matrix?" the Master whispered in awe. "How? When?"
"Yes. I have access to the Matrix. I have had it for a number of years, ever since I became an archivist."
"But it's impossible. You couldn't just gain access to the Matrix-," the Master protested, but once more the Doctor interrupted. "Does it matter how I did it? What matters is I've gotten it. I have learnt a great deal from it, and that can be used to help us make Gallifrey a great place once more."
"Why do you want to do this, Doctor?" the Master asked curiously. "I never had the impression you were interested in politics. And revenge... while that sounds like you, I remember what you did to Anzor by the way, there's more to it than that."
"Because I want there change to finally come to Gallifrey," the Doctor replied, "and I have my other reasons."
He said that in a final way that said he would not speak about it again. The Master didn't like it but he accepted the explanation, though the Doctor could see that the Master was clearly trying to think of a list of possible reasons for the Doctor's abrupt change of stance. The Doctor and the Master spent another hour speaking to one another to finalise plans and to arrange a meeting with some of the other leaders of the revolution. When the Master finally left the apartment, the Doctor smiled to himself.
The Time Lord leadership was getting seriously concerned and that was before those fools from the Celestial Intervention Agency arrived. For the last few weeks, they had noticed the revolutionaries gaining more and more ground. None of the High Council could work out why, and that was even before the assassinations began. They were strange. The people who were caught holding the staser weapons had not seemed like the types to commit any kind of political murder, and yet they had done it and they had not shown an ounce of remorse.
The Lord President himself knew that there was plenty of blame to go around for the sudden success of the revolution. Morbius' reign of terror which originally began with the Time Lord leadership being challenged on the aeons' long stance that Gallifrey did not mix with the rest of the universe to the deranged and war hungry mad tyrant creating an army of mercenaries who fanatically followed Morbius across a small but significant chunk of the universe, burning worlds down to the crusts, wiping out cultures or transforming them forever into something they had never been destined to become before he was finally caught and executed on Karn.
Morbius had left a massive mess in his wake. Thanks to him, many alien races knew of the Time Lords and of their existence. In the past, the Time Lords had been safe because no-one knew about them. Even if an alien spacefleet passed close to Gallifrey's system, their sensors would not be powerful enough to bypass the first layers of the Transduction fields that had protected Gallifrey for centuries, but even if they did detect a shadow of what was probably a planet then they couldn't do anything about it.
No. It had been considered best that if the Time Lords were to survive and carry on with their self-appointed mission of monitoring and maintaining the timelines, it was to be done without anyone knowing about their presence. If any race knew about it, then Gallifrey could be besieged. Races would want to use time travel for their own ends. Some races would want to use the Time Lords' power to erase a foe or rival from the timeline, causing tremendous damage. Those were the simplest reasons but the Time Lords had hidden themselves away for their own security, and for ten million years Gallifrey had been hidden and the Time Lords barring the researchers and the renegades who became disenchanted with life on their own world, though the President did not know why or what drove them to rebel against Time Lord society who left their world had remained safe all of this time.
Unfortunately, the good old days were gone. Many hostile species now knew of the Time Lords' existence, and there were more than a few who understandably held them responsible for Morbius because he was one of their own. But the Time Lords had hoped that another incident similar to the one with Morbius would never happen again, but it was purely wishful thinking. Morbius had been truly popular with many of the younger generations of Gallifrey, he had preached change and prosperity for the whole world, and for the first time ever many Time Lords had the notion drummed into their head that because of their power and their age they should be ruling the universe. It was only a matter of time before someone tried to after his failure and execution which had served as a warning not just to aliens but to Time Lords that the punishment for trying to meddle in the affairs of the Time Lord High Council would be severe.
The High Council had been trying to sort out the mess of the last revolution so they had not been able to counter this new one, which seemed to prefer working from the shadows at first rather than openly like Morbius had preferred. But the High Council had not expected the revolution to suddenly coerce people who hadn't shown any interest in their so-called cause, and now the Lord President was awaiting the arrival of a member of the Celestial Intervention Agency so he could raise a possible and plausible explanation as to what was happening.
The Lord President paced up and down the length of his office as he waited for the arrival but he was unprepared when he heard a voice speaking from behind. "My Lord President."
The President swung around at once. A thin man of medium height and build was standing there, wearing grey robes and skullcap that had no affiliation to any of the colleges of the Academy, but that was expected as was the lack of any telepathy from the other Time Lord. The CIA was extremely notorious for their paranoia. They made sure each of their members took steps to prevent anyone knowing too much about them, so the President knew nothing about the man before him, his family, what chapter he was a part of, and even what his name was. He also didn't bother asking the other Time Lord how in Rassilon's name he had managed to get in when there were two guards outside. It supported the reputation that the CIA were ghosts who had access to technology normal Time Lord technology was incapable of finding, but the Lord President did not care about that for now.
He had more important things to find out about.
"You are aware of the situation?" the Lord President asked, though he knew that the other man knew it.
"I am. The CIA has been tracking down this temporal activity for some time now," the CIA representative reported, and the Lord President asked himself for the first time just how much the CIA wanted him to actually know. If there was one thing he had learnt during his tenure as President of Gallifrey it was never to trust the CIA. He paid close attention to what the other Time Lord said next. "But recently they have begun to have effects on Gallifrey's future, whereas before they were only minute alterations."
The Lord President could not believe this. "You mean to tell me," he began in a whisper that only hinted at the sudden anger he was feeling, "that you were aware of someone on our own world, amongst our own people, was altering history without permission to do so without the authority of Temporal Control and of the High Council, never mind the CIA, and is now changing our own future?"
The CIA representative was not even bothered by the anger from the other Time Lord. In fact, the Lord President mused to himself, he looks like he's on the verge of yawning out of boredom. "Yes," he said blandly. "We have spent many months trying to track this Time Lord or Time Lady down, but we have not found any evidence." He added the possibility that it was a woman with a sneer, clearly believing it was impossible to contemplate.
The Lord President had to take a moment to push his annoyance out of the way. Two of his earliest regenerations had been into female incarnations, and they had been his favourite since they had given him a tremendous amount of time to shape his life, and he had needed to endure the sexism that existed. Technically the Time Lords considered themselves above sexual discrimination, but there were a few people who believed themselves better because they were one of the two genders.
Ignoring the other Time Lord's shameless sexual discrimination, the Lord President asked one of the most pressing questions on his mind that had materialised with the CIA representative's report. "Did this individual alter time to ensure these assassinations carried out by people who hadn't had any prior interest in the revolution?"
"Yes. We think whoever it is is Designing history. It's the only thing that makes sense."
The Lord President's face became masklike in his anger. "I want this Time Lord stopped," he growled under his breath while he mentally prepared himself to ask a few temporal engineers he knew if it was possible to Design a change on Gallifrey as opposed to the wider universe, and if it was possible if it could be prevented.
"I understand," the CIA representative's face was emotionless, making the President wonder if the Agency performed some kind of temporary lobotomy of some kind on their agents. It was like speaking to a robot or even a Cyberman. "We have learnt this particular Designer is bouncing his location around several relay points about the Capitol. We are closing in on him as we speak."
"Good," the Lord President nodded approvingly, his mind already working out how he was going to have this renegade punished, along with the rest of the revolutionaries. It was clearly some fool who had gone mad at the age of eight, someone who was part of the revolution who had no idea that the usual rules of meddling in history had just been thrown out of the black hole.
But then a mad idea came to his own mind... He would need to speak to the High Council about this later, but as he relayed the idea to the CIA representative since he would definitely need the support of the clandestine organisation, he felt that he could use the revolutions' own weapon against them...
The Doctor panted as he rushed through the corridors of the Capitol on the way to his apartment. He could hear the sound of the Chancellory guard right on his tail (he liked that expression, it came from planet Earth, but this was not the time), and he knew that when they caught him there would probably be little or no mercy. He was still having problems believing what the Time Lords had done.
It was unbelievable, shocking and yet it was the only thing that made sense.
The Time Lords had broken their precious laws of time. They had found out about his Designing the assassinations and the unexpected resignations of political opponents who had been a threat to the revolution. Although he was not usually violent, the Doctor had agreed to arrange the assassinations. They were easy enough to do. All he had done was use his TARDIS and the Matrix to reprogram the Time Lords or Ladies involved when they looked into the Untempered Schism so it would be a part of their future destinies at the appropriate time.
With each assassination and resignation, the Master and Magnus were able to move their own people into positions of authority. When he had programmed the assassins, he had deliberately programmed them to develop interests that would lead up to the eventual event - a party affiliation, an interest after reading a data-book perhaps, or even just a growing frustration with one of the politicians in Gallifrey. Either way, it had worked and thanks to him, the revolution had been picking up the pace.
But the Doctor had known from the exact moment he did this that the Time Lords would have sooner or later realised how he had managed to change history and affect the timelines of the future, and now they had. The Doctor knew his people could be devious but he had never imagined them actually being willing to play games with their precious Laws of Time just to undo what he was doing, but they had. They had also taken it a few steps further; now all of the revolutions victories that had been predicted over the last few months were now bitter defeats which left a decomposing taste in their collective mouths.
The next planned assassinations he had worked on for a week had failed miserably, and the last one had killed one of the revolutions political leaders instead of the desired target. The Master had been furious until the Doctor had assured him that he had nothing to do with it. But it was academic now; the Time Lords were after them
Behind him, the sound of boot steps stamping on the floor to his apartment echoed along the corridors like a hail of machine-gun fire. The Doctor cursed again as the stitch which was in his chest and sending shooting pains throughout his body made him wheeze with breath, and he was cursing his lack of vision in not having some kind of teleport bracelet or a transmat beam prepared in case he needed one to get out of a situation like this. With that in mind, he abruptly changed course and ducked and wove throughout the corridors. He had not done this sort of thing for years, not just because it wasn't exactly dignified, but because he was no longer a child. Ah, that took him back to happier days.
The Doctor snickered to himself quietly as he ducked inside a side corridor in order to hide and to gather his breath so he could reach his newest target in order to reach his main one, and he listened as the Chancellory Guard rushed past his hiding place. The Doctor peeped out a second after he believed they had gone past, and he kept his head turned in the direction they'd gone... only to jump in surprise when his eyes went down the full length of a cocked staser pistol, and he looked past the particle accelerators mounted on the top of the gun and looked into the unamused and studious eyes of the guardsman holding it.
"You are coming with me," the guardsman said.
The Doctor knew if he did that then he would very likely not get out of this alive. Besides he had no intention of just going along quietly. "You've made a mistake, my dear boy," he said, not bothering to even touch the mind of the Time Lord in front of him to tell whether or not he could even be referred to as a boy, but he looked young enough. "I am not involved with the revolution. There has been a misunderstanding... a misunderstanding."
The Doctor was a master hypnotist. But he was no-where near the level the Master had reached, but the Master had taught him a few tricks of how to overcome Time Lord minds, and now it was time to put that training to the test. The Doctor was lightly increasing the mental power he was placing on the guard after spending a moment lightly doing it, but soon the guard's arms were wavering. And then the Doctor's hand reached around the barrel of the pistol, before he snatched it and after checking the setting the Doctor shot the Time Lord in the chest, stunning him and leaving the Doctor with a weapon before he made a break for it; the bark of the staser had been loud enough and it was bound to bring the guards back.
Fortunately, no-one ran back, leaving him alone in the corridor. But the Doctor used the opportunity to reach the transmat booth that he knew was on this floor. Using the guardsman's ID card, the Doctor was able to bypass any blocking on his own identification and use the guards' instead. As he dialled in the address into the booths' controls, the Doctor wondered idly how long it would take before the rest of the platoon worked out what he had done, but he hoped he would be far away when that happened.
Once he punched in the last few numbers of the sequence, the Doctor stepped into the booth and waited for the transmat to activate. Once the beam collapsed his body into their potentialities before sending him off to the next booth, but as he arrived the Doctor needed a second to check his extremities. Like most people, he hated being transmatted through space. It wasn't an ideal form of travel; being broken down into potentialities and sent along in a data-stream, you thought you were going to be put back again in the wrong order, and there was a chance it would fail and you'd be lost. Even the Master would probably cringe at the thought of someone dying in that manner.
But his check proved he had made it in one piece. When he was finished, he walked towards the apartment... only to find a few guardsmen standing there. The Doctor didn't even give them a chance and he shot them down and walked into the apartment before he rushed towards the room his TARDIS was waiting. Had the Time Lords found the perception barrier he'd set up and bypassed it? The Doctor rushed through the apartment, but he couldn't see any sign that the Time Lords had been in here never mind actually come this far into the apartment.
He shut down the barrier and he found that the door was still locked and he walked into the room and he sighed in relief when he saw that his TARDIS was standing there completely untouched. But the Doctor walked around the time machine as nightmare thoughts rushed through his mind. What if the Time Lords had managed to get inside with a cipher-indent key of their own and they had done something to his ship?
The Doctor took a deep breath. He had to move fast and there was no time to second guess himself, and he pulled the key out of his pocket and unlocked the door and stepped inside his ship, but he could not see any sign of interference. But he walked hesitantly towards the console, set like the rest of the console room in white-default, and he began setting the controls, and he engaged the randomiser he had made for the TARDIS to help him evade the observation towers of Gallifrey before he worked on the settings to bypass the barriers by entering a different time state so his TARDIS would not be detected. Once he was finished, he pulled the main switch and the TARDIS dematerialised silently from Gallifrey.
Until next time.