CHAPTER FOUR

A DATE WITH THE PRESIDENT

The Doctor and Romana were silent as they entered her aircar, the journey was swift, but the open‐top vehicle had allowed the Doctor to take in some of the scenery as they zoomed at high speed through the vast hexagonal Panopticon. As they'd swooped down below cloud level, the Doctor figured out the destination, glancing to his side he saw Romana was facing forward, not looking at him.

The driver then banked them into an arc through the mist‐laden air and zoomed between the legs of the massive statue of Omega, which guarded the southern exit. The car had shot out of the Panopticon, scattering a handful of smaller vehicles plying their trade by the exit, and powered out into the heavy sulphurous fug of industrial Gallifrey, before heading up into the Presidential Palace.

Disembarking the car in silence he offered a hand to Romana to help her out, she spared his hand a glance before taking it. She then led him to a balcony overlooking the Capitol beneath them; a table had been set up with two chairs, as the Doctor sat down Romana pulled her collar off before sitting opposite him, a flagon of wine was between them.

"Welcome home Doctor," Romana said her tone even.

"Decidedly icier welcome than I'm used to Romana," the Doctor smiled disarmingly. "Not sure I like it much."

"And I don't like being manipulated Doctor," she told him, he tone still on a single register, but her eyes burnt with rage, she then pressed a few commands into the crystal table top.

An image appeared in the air between them, the image was clearly of Gallifrey, a Gallifrey. But the planet wasn't important, it was the structure above the planet that was important, the Edifice.

"It appears to be warping local space, bending gravity around it, spreading ripples into the local vortex. Your biodata imprint is all over it and it seems to be hewn from solid bone..." Romana trailed off, the implication clear. "And we both know of the Faction's predilection for bone Doctor, tell me what that structure is now."

The Doctor swallowed, he honestly didn't know how successful he'd been manipulating how this version of Romana's third incarnation would end up, but she deserved the truth...

"It's my TARDIS,"

"What?" clearly Romana wasn't expecting that, her eyes widened in shock.

"When I was in that cell in Saudi Arabia I accidently created a Time Corridor to my Third incarnation, because of that link I... he was diverted to the planet Dust." The Doctor swallowed. "While on the planet I encountered agents of the Faction, I was infected with their biodata virus. It began to rewrite me to join their own ranks, usually the virus wouldn't have affected me, but because I was regenerating..."

Romana nodded, when a Time Lord regenerated their immune system essentially 'shut down', otherwise their body would begin to attack the new cells as the body changed.

"However my TARDIS had already run my Timeline, it knew I wasn't supposed to regenerate then," the Doctor leaned forward and took a swig of the wine. "It adapted to form an improvised Paradox Machine; by taking my infected Timeline into a temporal orbit it kept that version of history as only a possibility. When it became too much the TARDIS broke apart before reforming around the four dimensional Klein bottle which contained the pocket universe created by I M Foreman. In about a day's time a Faction Paradox fleet will begin an attack on Gallifrey I, lead by me."

"Long story short, version of me who fell to the virus, became Grandfather Paradox, 292 years later I broke the Laws of Time to attack Gallifrey in my relative past, using Greyjan as President he was able to use the Matrix to collapse Time Lord history, erasing the other Gallifreys."

"That's why you had us up rate the Transduction barriers," Romana realised. "So that this Gallifrey wouldn't be erased."

"Exactly, my future self planned the assault perfectly, with the Enemy's first strike, as the energy wave pulsed through Gallifrey, the Faction used it to overlay themselves to the High Council chamber," the Doctor seemed to be having trouble by this point. "Grandfather Paradox, the Time Lord once known as the Doctor became 415th President of Gallifrey, however I realised that my Timeline was still in the balance, by firing my TARDIS's weapons system I drained off the last of the energy, causing the Edifice to split open and destroy Kasterberous, in doing so 'resetting' my history so I never arrived on Dust."

"And you couldn't alter events because you'd already seen Gallifrey's future," Romana finished for him.

"Exactly, I couldn't change history, even future history, but I can make sure that the real Gallifrey is safe from my doppelganger, the very moment the Edifice splits open the version of me who became Grandfather Paradox will cease to exist."

Romana nodded.

"Who is the Enemy Doctor?" Romana asked, the Time Lords knew that war was coming, they just didn't know with whom.

"I don't know..." the Doctor told her, gazing right into her eyes so she knew he was telling the truth.