Obeying the Second Law

The botanic gardens in New Oxford was one of the few bright places on Victoria Minor. Careful attention from the horticulturalists ensured that the brightly coloured foliage stayed free of coal dust, allowing the brilliant blues, purples, and yellows to stand out against the blacks and grays of the surrounding landscape. It reminded Jack of that scene in The Wizard of Oz when Judy Garland leaves Kansas and winds up in Oz… only from here he could still see Kansas. Neil had brought them this way, offering to show them around the city properly. Jack only half listened as Neil rattled off trivia about the local infrastructure – Jack had already exhausted anything he knew about the time quake of 20-odd years ago.

Gwen listened to their guide earnestly – she had never been on another planet before, even if this one felt in many ways like she'd just been to visit a living museum. It had taken Jack this long to let her in on his life outside Torchwood, his adventures with the Doctor… she wasn't going to waste this opportunity which might be her last. She glanced sideways at Martha and Donna, who both appeared to be lost in their own thoughts. This was the most exhilarating experience of her life, and they both looked like they wanted to go home. Gwen started to lose track of what Neil was saying about the service robots who helped tend to the botanic gardens, and began to wonder if life with the Doctor was really something she wanted to be learning more about. A small chugging contraption, belching steam and soot and wielding an excavator's bucket wheeled by with a scoop of dark mossy soil for an on-looking horticulturalist.

Nearby a crowd had gathered, surrounding a burly muscular man standing on a platform shouting through the small end of a large cone over the din of angry voices. A few curious onlookers hung back, leaning against the odd gnarly ashen tree. The crowd whooped and hollered in response to the man, and as they neared the disturbance Jack could begin to make out what was being said.

"It started out small, didn't it!" his voice cried out. "They'll just weave our clothes! shovel our dirt! sweep our floors!"

A garbled but clearly angry outcry came from the crowd, egging him on…

"Luddites." Neil grumbled. Jack gave him a questioning look. "They can't see that technology can help us here on Victoria Minor… that it has a place."

"Are you sure they aren't just concerned that technology has overstepped it's bounds?" Asked Jack, clearly playing devil's advocate. Guilt flickered behind Neil's eyes for a brief moment, before he looked up in alarm. Jack spun around to see what had caught his attention.

"But now, they aren't just taking our jobs…"

At the edges of the crowd, police officers began closing in…

"They are enforcing our laws…"

Beside each officer stood a similarly uniformed figure, each with a clear polycarbonate head…

"We are not only expected to look at them as equals…"

The crowd grew more irate with each sentence, and with the awareness that the very thing they were protesting was closing in…

"We are supposed to respect them as superiors!"

The police and their mechanical deputies rushed the crowd, and the park exploded into a melee of sticks and stones striking against flesh and plastic. Neil and Jack turned to escape the ever swelling masses when Donna screamed.

Donna watched frightened as the pandemonium grew, when suddenly she felt the grip of cold brass around her upper arm. Panic ripped through her as she realized that, as Martha and Gwen rushed to free her from her mechanical assailant, the droid was pushing all three of them into the rioting mob.

Jack sprinted toward his friends and tackled the clockwork man from behind, hoping to knock it off balance. Rather, it continued to move forward as if he were nothing more than a toddler gripping his mother's leg. More droids converged on the four, pressing them further into the crush.

"They aren't like the others!" Gwen cried above the confusion. Jack looked around… she was right. Their assailants weren't uniformed like the droids accompanying the police officers, which were systematically restraining the Luddite protesters so that the police could manacle their wrists. Everyone's heart sank when they could see the police pause their arrests to don gas masks.

The bright colours of the botanic gardens were soon veiled by a blue haze as gas canisters were tossed into the riot. The clank of metal hit right at Martha's feet and the cylinder discharged its load. Her eyes began streaming as the blue smoke ripped into her lungs, hacking coughs wracking her body as she collapsed to her knees, dizzy and nauseated. She looked over to see Jack and Gwen trying to hold each other up, only to be pushed down by a couple of masked police officers, and Donna unconscious on the ground. As her vision faded and the world spiraled into black, Martha realized that their mechanical assailants had fled, and Neil was nowhere to be seen.

In Consideration of Magnetism

"New Berlin." Said Freddie as the Doctor bounced a magnet in his palm.

"Where?"

"In New Berlin, about 640 kilometers from here, has just started up a facility designed to provide remote access to a massive assemblage of engines – no punch cards required."

"Using magnetic signals to provide access to their information…" the Doctor continued her thought…

"Other engine-based technology can be controlled from a central location…"

"Like clockwork droids."

The Doctor picked up a brass washer out of one of the baskets full of parts which lined the shelves of the shop, and flipped it over his fingers one by one, in the manner of a magician, as Freddie explained that Baron Lovelace was spearheading the project, calling it Artificial Intelligence. There was something about this young woman that was beginning to niggle at him. There was a familiarity about her that he was having a difficult time placing. He had tried to reach out while they were working, just in case it was indeed… but no. All he could get was white noise, as he chastised himself for seeing patterns in things which weren't there. Perhaps he'd been hanging around with humans for too long.

"What?" came Freddie's voice, breaking through his thoughts. She was looking at him puzzled, and he realized she'd finished her story and he'd been staring right through her.

"Sorry, nothing." But he just couldn't shake that… "You suddenly reminded me of someone I once knew."

Before Freddie could react, the shop doors swung open and Joseph burst in with Ada drifting in behind him.

"The park…" Joseph said almost breathlessly. "You should've seen it… dozens of police, with dozens of droids just arrested a mob of nearly a hundred Luddite protestors."

"Looks like some of your new friends were among them." Ada eyed Freddie coolly. "Don't tell me you're becoming a Luddite sympathizer just to undermine my family's reputation."

The Doctor watched as anger surged across Freddie's eyes, and her hands balled into tight fists. After a moment of seething, Freddie walked toward the dissected droid lying on the workbench, picked up the magnet and its casing, and handed it to Ada.

Ada held the shattered magnet in her gloved palm, the black flecks working their way into the fibres of the fine lacey fabric. She looked up at Freddie, surprised. "Where did you get this?"

Freddie cocked a thumb towards the droid. "Out of that." Both women held each other's gaze, each understanding the implication of the innocuous lump of black rock.

Ada's eyes widened with confusion. "Bu-... But this wasn't in the original design. Thi-… This is still highly experimental."

Freddie gently took the magnet and casing back and set it slowly on the bench beside her. Both women looked each other in the eye once more, this time realizing that neither was trying to undermine the other.

"Look." Freddie started, speaking slowly and calmly. "I know I've made no secret of what I think of your father's… ethics. But I promise you, I have no desire to drag your name through the mud over this. Please, if he was the one who implemented this modification… we need to get him to stop."

Ada had opened her mouth to speak, initially in anger, but something in the way Freddie spoke to her made her stop. She simply nodded.

Snooping at the Read Baron's

Neil sat tensely on the edge of the settee in the Baron's den, wringing his hands nervously. The Baron thumped his thick fingers on the glossy lacquered surface of his desk, wetly sucking the end of his cigar as he peered at Neil through the pungent blue smoke. "What happened, boy?" the Baron wheezed. "Why did one of my creations suddenly up and attack and innocent young woman and her child? And then proceed to attack the very woman assigned to maintain them?"

Neil looked down at his grease-stained fingernails, clearing his throat. "Um... sir... I don't know."

"You don't know!?" The Baron exploded, sitting up in his chair, brandishing the barely smoking stub. "You, who I trusted to make these modifications, who I trusted to carry out my experiments, don't know!?"

"No sir... perhaps it was a bad signal from... um... New Berlin. Bad magnet box maybe..." Neil spoke lowly, grasping at straws, waiting for his words to halt the man's face from becoming as flushed as his was paled.

The heavy study door creaked open slowly, and Ada's face emerged first, eyes wide and staring at her father as if she couldn't possibly know him. She had heard his outburst from the other side, breathing out an unconsciously held breath as she leaned her now hot forehead against the cool wood of the door that had muffled the encounter within. Joseph had put a comforting hand on Ada's shoulder, and the Doctor couldn't help but notice Freddie tense slightly as she observed this.

"Father? Is it true?" Ada asked in disbelief. "Did you cause this?"

The Baron's complexion grew pallid and hollow as he focused on his daughter, barely noticing the other visitors filing in behind her. "Darling, it's not what you think."

"So you're not trying to control traffic droids using a magnetic signal generated at New Berlin?" Freddie piped up. "Causing them to attack defenseless women and children?"

"It was an accident!" the Baron cried, as Ada burst into tears running to his side and throwing her arms around her father's neck.

"And you didn't use those same droids to have my friends arrested?" fumed the Doctor, glancing at Neil - the last person he'd seen them with.

"I just needed to get them out of the way for a moment... before everyone found out what I was doing... I can explain!"

"Oh I think you'd better." the Doctor responded, his voice low and menacing, causing the room to go silent and the air to still.

The Baron stared at the Doctor mouth agape, halfway between asking him who he was, and blurting out his entire story. He quavered on this point for seconds which seemed like hours before he finally found his voice.

"Yes, I was experimenting with controlling the traffic droids using the AI facility in New Berlin." He said, as authoritatively as he could. He could feel this strangers eyes boring into him, accusing and judging. He didn't know who this man was, and was beginning to get annoyed with how intimidated he was by him. "I charged Neil with the duty of performing the modifications." Freddie's eyes widened slightly, at the mention of Neil. She wasn't sure whether to feel betrayed, or impressed.

"And you put maintenance in the hands of Morgan's Mechanical Shop... why? To set us up for a fall when the experiments got totally out of hand? Like yesterday?" Freddie accused.

The Baron's heart sank with the realization that he was going to have to come clean about something he should have a long time ago.

"I used my leverage with the Mayor to put someone in charge of maintenance who I knew would understand the more complex aspects of this machinery." He started. "Someone who had the idea right around the same time I did."

Everyone in the room looked at Freddie, including the Doctor, but all Freddie was aware of was herself, the Baron, and her heart swelling with vindication. The Baron continued, addressing her directly. "I really don't know what caused that one droid to go berserk. I'm only glad that you were there to prevent the situation from becoming worse."

"Which is why these experiments need to stop." The Doctor said, drawing the room's attention to him. "Baron this technology can be very dangerous. I know. I've seen it in action." The Baron saw danger in the Doctor's eyes, and felt inexplicably as though he should agree with him - call off the experiments now before whatever danger lie within was visited upon Victoria Minor.

"Wait a minute." Freddie interjected. The Doctor looked to her with surprise. "It really isn't a bad idea."

"What!?" exclaimed the Doctor.

"It isn't a bad idea... the scale is just way too large for a start, and there aren't enough fail-safes." Freddie explained. "We can simply demagnetize the transmitters until we get the internal engine coding stable, and add an over-ride for corrupted incoming signals." She was smiling now, enjoying what felt like a good plan that would not only further the Baron's research, but her own aspirations as an engineer.

The Doctor looked her in the eye, and although he stood at least a meter away from her, she felt like it was mere centimeters. "Freddie, you don't understand. Clockwork droids are not by their nature stable. That's why they are obsolete in this time. Better technology can be found." Freddie looked at the Doctor quizzically. In this time... what an odd thing to say. Freddie realized that she was staring into the Doctor's eyes, and it felt as though the room... or was it the world... was rotating around them. She took a deep breath and shook her head. Time to get back to her senses - a slip of the tongue and a dizzy spell did not an impossibility make.

"No Doctor, I think I do understand. And I'm willing to help the Baron carry out these experiments safely and responsibly. Now let's go get your friends out of jail."