Episode 2 – Unforeseeable side effects

She still couldn't believe it. Here she was, on a foreign planet, in a different time, with people who looked like humans, but who she couldn't accept as being truly human. It was afternoon and the bigger sun was at her highest point in the sky, shining down on the huge city that could be seen from the laboratory in the 5th floor of the building. Martha preferred staring outside, examining the mountain range far behind the city or watching the small river running towards and disappearing in the hills on the Western side. This view calmed her down because she knew that whatever was being done behind her could either mean rescuing a civilisation or completely annihilating other ones.

The Doctor seemed to have noticed her concerns and walked over to her. He, too, looked outside, silently staring into the snowy landscape. "You know that I have to help these people…" he begun justifying his decision.

"You're creating Cybermen. You yourself have told me how dangerous and deadly this race is. And now you're responsible for everything that might happen in the future!" Martha said.

"You don't really believe that I would create such machines I have told you about? I'm trying to save the people – and avoiding to create Cybermen as we know them."

"But if you did this, wouldn't this change the future anyway?"

"The Cybermen I told you about, the ones I encountered with Rose; they were from a different universe. This has nothing to do with my actions here. The only thing I am worried about, is my second appearance on this planet. I will return in a few months, and then the Cybermen will have been created."

"That's what I am talking about!"

"But I can't really remember what happened. This memory feels some kind of…lost. It means that it's no fixed point in time and that whatever I decide right now, will be the right decision. That I meet – or met – the Cyberrace as I told you won't be changed. They have been recreated over and over again, but these Cybermen on this planet – they might be changed. They might not be like those in the parallel universe, or those who fought against the Daleks in our universe…"

Martha didn't respond. Why couldn't he stop talking? What he said made no sense. Cybermen in this universe or the other one, it made no difference for her.

"Just answer me one question, Doctor," she said and faced him. "Are we safe?"

"Yes, Martha," he responded without hesitation. "We are safe." With those words he returned to his work with the fellow Mondasian scientists and Martha was sure that something terrible was about to go wrong and that it would have fatal consequences not only for all the living species on this planet, but also for this universe…

The Doctor returned to the two bioengineers who were bending over a petri dish. "We're ready to inject the cyber-substance," one of them informed The Doctor.

He nodded and took the syringe to fill it carefully with the newly synthesised nanoprobes. "Let's hope this version isn't so radical in attacking the blood cells," he said and added the mixture to the blood sample. Then he placed it in the microscope. All three scientists stared at the computer monitor to see what was happening on molecular level. The five injected nanoprobes dashed through the red mixture which appeared grey on the screen. One probe had clung on a red blood cell. It started forming a thin layer around the blood cell.

"What are you trying to do?" Martha asked.

The Doctor turned around. He hadn't noticed that she had joined. "Due to the weather conditions it is becoming impossible for the humans to respire because the heme group of the haemoglobin molecule does not bind oxygen anymore. We've designed nanoprobes that attach to the red blood cells and form a protective layer around them. In the second phase they should rebuild a heme group. The nanoprobes is made of steel, which means that it forms a molecule similar to heme, just based on carbon, chrome and nickel. The important iron molecule of course stays iron."

"I didn't study material sciences, Doctor…"

"Steel is iron with carbon. Most of the time, other elements are added to adjust the characteristics of the material, such as chrome, phosphorus, nickel and so on. These elements build exactly the same structure of the haemoglobin that we have in our red blood cells, just on top of the blood cell itself. The most important element in heme is the iron that binds the oxygen in order to transport it in our circulation system. As steel mainly consists of iron, forming artificial heme isn't the problem."

"Then what is?"

"Restricting the nanoprobes on red blood cells. They are quite aggressive and would like to convert every living cell in the body."

"And here we have the birth of the Cybermen."

"What are these 'Cybermen' you keep talking about?" one of the bioengineers asked.

"Nothing. Just a cybernetic race we have met a while ago," The Doctor responded.

"Like the Borg?"

"You've met the Borg before?"

"We haven't, but the Silurians have. Nasty race, they said. Trying to convert every living soul into one of their own…"

"Yes, they do…" The Doctor murmured and turned back to the screen. "Here, again. It's still trying to attack white blood cells and platelets!" He sighed. Would he really be responsible for the creation of Mondasion Cybermen? Wasn't he already responsible for enough deaths in this universe? Why couldn't he just stay out of trouble and go meditating at the Eye of the Orion?

"Let's start from new," he proposed.

"What if we add an automatic self-destruct after a certain time span and we would need to retake nanoprobes every day?" one of the scientists asked.

Martha walked away again. She couldn't stand to listen to this techno-babble anymore. She needed something to do – something else than fetching brilliant scientists coffee. She left the laboratory complex and found herself in a sterile, white-painted corridor. She was used to rooms like that; it looked like the hospital she trained in. But still she felt uncomfortable here.

The Doctor hadn't even noticed that Martha had been gone for four hours when she returned. She explained she had been wandering through the recovery garden behind the building and asked for their progress.

"It was quite a simple mistake. We just had to add a cyberchip onto each probe that contained 'directions' for where to go. The experiments look much more promising right now," The Doctor said. "I think we can start the patient phase in five hours."

"Patient phase? You're actually trying to convert a real person?" Martha could not believe her ears.

"Listen, Martha. These people here are dying. We need a fast solution!"

"But that's no reason to discard any ethics left in research!"

"It will be completely safe! We have installed an aborting mechanism in each probe. We can stop the experiment whenever it might become too dangerous," The Doctor reassured her with a smile. She nodded, she trusted him. Why else should she have run away with him?

The next few hours she continued watching over the scientists' shoulders, trying to understand what was going on. She had no problems understand the medical site of their attempts, but she had absolutely no idea about engineering and material sciences, and The Doctor just seemed to know everything. The evening approached and The Doctor and four other scientists left to the cellar in order to inject the nanoprobes into two volunteers, Dr Sigas and Dr Hunton. Martha wasn't allowed to join because the security measures were incredibly high. The cellar could easily be sealed in the case that the experiment went wrong and the building was evacuated except for the basic staff to stay. Martha protested until she was allowed to remain in the building as well. She was scared for The Doctor. Not only because he was her only way home, but also because she has become his friend. And he sometimes needed a human hand, to remind him on that he neither was unerring.

"Are you nervous?" a female biology professor asked and sat down next to Martha at the huge desk in the bioscience office.

"Of course. The Doctor is a friend of mine. If anything goes wrong, he'll be locked up in there with these Cybermen!"

"They aren't Cybermen, not like the Borg. We're just trying to enhance them with technology. But you don't have to worry. Everything will go just fine. We're injecting them the nanoprobes now and after the adjustment phase, they'll go to sleep in the Genesis Chambers and be monitored throughout the night. If anything goes wrong, we can immediately abort the experiment," she reassured with a smile that scientists always put on when having no idea what they were talking about. Martha knew that smile, she put it on often enough when talking to patients.

She was too tired to argue and decided to nod and silently disagree. She waited for more than an hour until The Doctor, accompanied by the other two scientists, returned.

"Everything seems fine until now," The Doctor explained to Martha. "They're both stable, but Dr Sigas has much faster adapted to the nanoprobes. His conversion is more progressed than Dr Hunton's." He looked around. Most scientists were leaving to their small quarters in the building. Only the very basic staff stayed, their eyes fixed on the many monitors which showed the test chambers.

"Don't you think it's time to go to sleep as well?" The Doctor asked his companion.

"I'm quite tired," she admitted and followed him to the TARDIS. "But I'm not quite sure if I can close my eyes at all…"

However, one minute after lying down in her loft bed, she was already asleep and had no idea what at exactly the same time was going on in the test chambers…

When Dr Sigas awoke from unconsciousness, he needed a few seconds to remember what had happened. He was part of the experiment; he would be the first to adapt to the climate, the first to save his people. His name would be put down in all the history books to last forever. He turned his head to look at the computer monitor. The nanoprobes had attached to 76% of all his red blood cells. "Time for phase I.2," he muttered and checked the conversion of his fellow scientist, Dr Hunton. His one was at 54%, just enough to start changing the test chamber conditions into those of the air outside. He initiated the process and the chamber cooled down to minus degrees and changed the artificial composition of the air to less humane characteristics. Dr Sigas felt the change and embraced the temperatures. The injection, allowing his cells to adapt their growth and suicide cycles to the lower degrees, started working.

Suddenly, he gasped for breath. What was happening? It was a reflex when not having enough air. But he should be able to breathe as his blood cells were overlaid with a steel skin. He looked over to Dr Hunton who did not seem to have gained consciousness yet. He tried to reach the controls again to reverse the air conversion but it was too late. He couldn't retransform the composition of the air. "Stop it! Abort the experiment!" he screamed at the camera. He saw how the scientists upstairs in the laboratories overwrote the command codes of the computer in the testing chamber. The temperatures were rising again. "No! Make it stop," he shouted. He couldn't stand the high temperatures.

"Make it cold again!" The temperature stopped at minus five degrees. "I need the cold," he muttered while trying not to suffocate. He stretched his arm to reach the monitor again and screamed when seeing that his skin was slowly turning grey. The nanoprobes had evolved! They did not only attach red blood cells, but also his skin cells. The upper skin layers were made of dead skin cells, without nucleus and without protection which made them easier to be attacked. He tried to rip this steel skin off but he couldn't grab hold of it. Yelling in pain he stumbled forwards and out of the Genesis chamber. In all his pain he looked up and saw his reflection in the window glass. His face had been transformed as well. He was a machine. But he was a human! Not a machine! Not a Borg!

He heard an alarm going off. But it wasn't the alarm of the building, it was the alarm of the other Genesis chamber. The life signs of Dr Hunton were dramatically sinking as his transformation wasn't progressed enough to adapt to the weather conditions in the chamber. Dr Sigas looked at the computer monitor responsible for the air and saw a blue screen: Error! The scientists upstairs must have lost control of the computer. "Don't do anything!" he screamed at the camera in panic. "Don't abort the experiment. I have it under control!" Everything was going so fine. If they flooded the chamber or destroyed it, everything would be lost. He didn't care for his own life, but only for the scientific progress. "I got it under control," he muttered to himself and stumbled over to his colleague. His feet were so heavy, as was his own body. The nanoprobes were doing their work. But he had stepped out of the Genesis chamber which had given him the for the conversion necessary steel supply. Now the probes had to work with the steel amount that was already in his body.

He checked the computer for Dr Hunton. The conversion was too slow. He looked around and found what he needed: A second injection! It will kill him, he thought but nevertheless, he had to give it. Right after injecting him with a second supply, Dr Hunton suddenly awoke. He gasped for air, just as Dr Sigas, then starting shouting and yelling.

"Everything is fine. The transformation has worked!"

"It hurts! It hurts so much!"

"It's just in the beginning. Your body needs to adapt to the pain."

"Make it stop! Make it stop!"

Dr Hunton also walked out of his Genesis chamber but fell to the ground.

Dr Sigas couldn't understand. He, too, felt pain, but it was still bearable. He couldn't stand his fellow scientist, and friend, suffering like this. Should he kill him? Hardly possible, as his skin was also transformed into steel. Continue the process. That's what he was supposed to do! But what exactly? He had a look around. They had left everything that might be needed in an emergency inside the room. Lots of steel and steel and steel. That was it! Not a steel skin, but a steel case. Much more robust. All over the body! He started by placing the right steel pieces which were abundant in all shapes and sizes, onto Dr Hunton himself. But it didn't help.

It was a flash of inspiration and there were so many contra arguments crossing his mind at the same moment, but he had no time to think about ethics. He helped the screaming Dr Hunton back into his chamber and connected him with all the cables that he didn't break when having escaped. He then reprogrammed his computer to get access to the nanoprobe's suicide mechanism. The only difference was that he did not want them to commit suicide: But to continue their progress into the nerve system. Without pain, Dr Hunton could survive. The only thing making him inhumane and crying right now was pain. If Dr Sigas could relieve him of that emotion…

He worked without hesitation. If he had looked back he would have seen that the cameras were offline and that the communication with the labs did not work either. He did not know that the scientists were right now discussing to bomb the test chamber as they had no idea what was going on. The only thing that gave Dr Sigas enough time to complete his actions was that half the scientists trusted him to find a solution while the other half wanted to flood, bomb and fill up the cellar of the building. Only because the scientists upstairs could not agree and hence not act in time, did Dr Sigas successfully remove all pain of his colleague. The nanoprobes had attached to the nerve cells, but what Dr Sigas didn't know was that the probes also crawled upwards the spine and into the brain.

When Dr Hunton opened his eyes again, Dr Sigas was very relieved to probably having saved his friend's life. But on the second glance, he noticed that something was wrong. Not only no pain in Dr Hunton's eyes, but also no emotions. Everything had been deleted.

"It worked," Dr Hunton recognised with a tinny voice. "I have fully adapted to this environment." He looked around as if he was scanning the environment. "No pain, no emotions. No pain is what makes us stronger. We must help the others!"

"Yes and no. We have to help the others, but we need our emotions. Otherwise we would lose our humanity!" Dr Sigas said.

His friend looked at him as if he looked directly through him. "Humanity? Look at me! Do I look human? No, humans cannot survive here. But I can. My human part is gone; the rest of the humans need to go as well. We are the new race, Montras. We are the ones that survive the climate change. And we need the others to survive as well!"

Dr Sigas stumbled backwards and fell on the floor because he still wasn't used to his steel-parts.

"You don't agree?" Dr Hunton realised. "We are the future of the people. You either adapt to the climate changes like us or you die a cold death outside. But I can help you. If you don't want to adapt, I can help you die faster. Faster than outside." He stepped forwards and reached out his hand.

Dr Sigas felt the cold metal on his not yet transformed neck. "If you don't adapt, I help you avoid the suffering of a slow death. I will make it fast," Dr Hunton said and grabbed harder. Dr Sigas squeaked and his body then sank lifelessly to the ground. "People have to adapt," Dr Hunton muttered and stomped towards the chamber door. "They need to adapt in order to survive. They need to be upgraded."


Don't forget to leave a review.