Anaesthesia

by Kathryn Andersen

Written for: Bad Cliches Made Good ficathon
Request: "Amnesia!" requested by AstroGirl2
FicUniverse: Doctor Who (9th Doctor, pre-"Rose")
Spoilers: 9th Doctor through to "Dalek"
Words: 5000

Chapter 1

Someone was singing.

"Wake up pretty darlin',
I know you got the Blues,
But you're still breathin',
and as sure as fusion fuse,
If you lost it all, you got nothin' left to lose
Don't let the Empty get you down
Don't let the Empty get you down."

The voice was dark and sweet, like... like something dark and sweet that he couldn't remember the name of.

"Keep on, pretty darlin',
don't let them make you crawl.
Take one step and another,
though you can't see at all," the voice continued.

It occurred to him that it was dark, and he was lying on something flat. He opened his eyes to dimness and shadows. The light in the place, what little there was of it, was green; not the green of trees, but something harsher. A woman was bending over him.

"You just keep -" the voice broke off. "You're awake!" He could see the flash of her smile against her dark face. He felt her hand on his brow. "Don't you worry, Elly's gonna look after you."

He smiled at her. "I feel fine, thanks," he said.

Her eyes widened. "You understood me!"

"Shouldn't I?"

"Maybe there's some hope, then, for the others," she said.

"What others?"

"The ghost took their souls," she said. "Big Jem and Ferkle and Melda and the others. Sittin' in a corner and the water got in their brains. Gone," she said sadly. "No more knowing than a bunch of vat-yeast."

He sat up, and banged his head against an overhang. "Ow!"

She laughed.

He glared at her, rubbing his head.

"Sorry, but you looked so surprised!"

The obstruction turned out to be a large pipe; he'd been lying on a sort of shelf underneath it, about two feet higher than the floor. Other pipes travelled up and across the walls. Rectangular shapes, boxes, huddled in clusters, their outlines broken by objects on top of them or spilling out of them. The light came from a green glowing rod sticking out of a cup on top of a box in the middle of the area. It wasn't really a room. More like a nook; a dark curtain partitioned it off from the outside.

He twisted around and sat up more carefully. He touched the wall next to him, and put his feet on the floor. He could feel it all moving: a curve over an ellipse over a spiral. He recognised the particular twist of it. "We're in orbit above a planet, aren't we?"

"How can you not know that? Who are you?"

"I'm supposed to know?"

"You don't know who you are? Your name? Your Eydee?"

"No," he shook his head.

"Your parentage? Your living space?"

"No." He frowned. "I take it that's a problem."

"Seems you're not so far better off than the others."

"I'm a little more knowing than a bunch of vat-yeast."

She smiled. "Truth," she said. "But you've still fallen. I thought you might be a Reg, but if you can't prove Eydee then you're a None just like me."

"Eydee? You mean like Identification?" He patted the pockets of his leather jacket. "I didn't have anything on me?"

Elly gestured at a pile of objects on a box near his improvised bed. "That was all you had on you."

He poked through the pile. Lumpy things like half-melted plastic and clockwork. Bits of plastic and metal. A ball of string. A leather wallet with a clear partition holding a completely blank piece of paper. A pouch that contained disks of metal, some flat plastic squares, and something that looked like a large beetle. A metal cylinder with recessed buttons and a sphere attached to the end. He recognised none of it.

He tapped at the wallet, and its blank piece of paper. "That looks as if there should be something there," he said. "But there isn't. Bit like my mind, really." He frowned as he put the objects in various pockets. He didn't want to think about the blankness of his mind, though every item he put away reminded him of his lack of knowledge. He'd rather get his mind off... how much was off his mind. It would be even better if he could find a solution to the problem. "You mentioned others," he said to Elly. "Others who were vegetables."

"The ghost got them."

"Ghost? Maybe. Or something that seems like a ghost. There has to be something that's causing it. People don't just lose their memories, or their minds, for no reason. What did they have in common?"

"Big Jem and Ferkle, they were bad, rough. But even the likes of them didn't deserve that. Melda, nobody would miss her neither; tongue as sharp and bitter as blight. But Withy, everyone will miss Withy. Sad little thing, scared of everything, but wouldn't harm nobody."

"Any mysterious deaths?"

"Maybe."

He raised an eyebrow inquiringly.

"Old Githa, she was found dead without a mark on her. But she was as tough as cable, it wasn't old age she died of. The Regs, they didn't bother checking why. If it's just Nones dying, they don't care. Off to the furnace, put the ashes in recyc, that's it."

"So what are Regs and Nones?"

"A Reg, it means you're registered, on the ShipComp. You have work, you get food, living space. A None, it means you're nobody. Don't get nothing but what you can scrounge, or steal." She lifted her head defiantly. "I'm the best scrounger there is."

He jumped to his feet. "Let's go scrounge some information, then. Elly, isn't it?"

"Yes, I'm Elly." She assessed him with her eyes. "I think I'll call you Will."

He looked at her and shrugged. "It'll do."

Over the next few hours, it seemed like Will was leading and Elly following, instead of the other way around. Nobody they asked had seen him before, nobody knew who he was. But he didn't stop there; he asked questions of everybody about everything.

"Where does the food come from?"

"From the dispensers."

"Where do the dispensers get it?"

"From the gardens."

"Who looks after the gardens?"

"Reg BioTechs."

And half the time the answer would be "Ask Elly, she's got a song for that."

He asked Elly about the world they were orbiting. And she sang of the fathers' fathers, who sought a new land in the skies. And how they built a Ship to sail between the stars, which could go no faster than the starlight, and so the fathers' fathers would die before they came to the land they sought. But for their children's children they would go. And so they went, in this ark, with all that was needful for life, and things that would be needful for when they arrived, and the ShipComp to run it all. And at long last, they came to journey's end, and found it an end indeed, for the planet they claimed for their new home was a doom and a curse, for though it was full of life as their seekings had said, the very ground was poison to humankind. But the Ship had no more fuel, there was nowhere they could go. So they hung above the world, trapped between death and death.

His eyes were wet when when she was done. He shook his head sharply. "Why?" he asked. "Why is it a trap? Your fathers lived on the Ship, why can't you?"

"Ship won't last forever."

"Planets don't, either."

"They last longer. And don't need Techs to keep them running."

He touched his nose and held one finger up. "Point."