Part 7: There is No Paradise

"Isn't there anything you can do for him?" shouted the Doctor, who was bent over the Brielian's screaming body, buzzing him with his sonic screwdriver.

"No," answered the other Brielian through clenched teeth.

"But your people are some of the best healers in the universe!"

"For other species, yes. We are immune to our own medicines. It's too late. I will take him to the morgue, where he can die comfortably. It's best we can offer."

The Doctor growled. Then he stood up, pocketed his sonic screwdriver, and closed his eyes a moment. He opened them again. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he said to the injured Brellian on the floor.

"I… demand," choked out the hysterical alien, "that that man die for his murder." He pointed one long finger from his undamaged hand at me.

"I am in agreement," said the other Brielian, quietly. "The punishment for murder is a capital one."

Fear began to eat at me. "But I didn't mean to! I just meant to stop him releasing those… things. I… at worst, that's manslaughter!"

"No more murder," said the Doctor. "One death is bad enough, we don't need to add another to it."

"But-"

"No. He is out of your jurisdiction. I'll take care of him."

"Fine," said the Brielian, walking to his fellow. He bent down and gently reached into a particularly bulgy section of skin at the alien's side. He pulled out a small object wrapped in cloth, and handed it to the Doctor. "Here. Let's just get this over with."

The Doctor unwrapped it. The wormhole generator was a smooth black box just a little smaller than an IPad, which had a circle made of some sort of crystal embedded into one side, and a short metal knob attached to the other. "Okay," said the Doctor, looking at the Brielians. "I'll just power this up and send you lot home. Take care of yourselves."

"Just go," said the uninjured Brielian, bending to pick up his still yelling companion. "Thank you for your help."

"Right," said the Doctor, nodding. He turned to me. "Come along," he said quietly, and then walked out of the room.

I followed him. The fact that he was actually walking worried me more than anything else.

Staring out the open TARDIS doors, I saw blue sky all around, save for the large white cloud floating before us. Far, far, below, I could see the city of Jerusalem and the terrain of the surrounding earth. And right beside me, I watched the Doctor as he held the newly repowered wormhole generator in his hand. He'd hooked up the crystal to a wire in the TARDIS, muttering something about how he could "use the time vortex to jumpstart it," and then he'd buzzed his screwdriver at it, saying he was 'fine-tuning the instructions so it'll drop them off exactly where we want them to go," and now he too was staring out the doors, preparing to open a hole in space and time.

"Nasty way to travel, wormholes," he remarked. "I'd hate to have to deal with one that I couldn't control with a device like this. Hopefully I won't run into any more any time soon." He looked back at me. "You ready?"

I nodded.

"In that case… Geronimo!" He twisted the knob on the wormhole generator. Immediately, a dark beam burst out from the crystal, traveled through the TARDIS doors, and stopped just before the drifting cloud.

"I expected some sort of explosion," I commented, my eyebrows furrowed. "Where's the wormhole?"

"Oh, it's there," said the Doctor. "Watch."

I watched, and when, a few seconds later, the front of the cloud hit where the beam had ended, it disappeared. The whole sky around that area shimmered and rippled, and it only took a few more seconds before the wormhole entirely swallowed up the spaceship cloud.

Then the Doctor twisted the knob again, and a dark beam shot out from the sky and into the generator's crystal. "And that's that," he said, pocketing the device again. "Crisis averted. Millions of people saved."

I looked down at the tiny city of Jerusalem beneath us. "What about the nanites? They were still released."

"Er, yes," said the Doctor. "They'll continue as they've been programmed, spreading Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, and then, the world."

"Great," I muttered. "Well, I guess history remains intact, then. Jesus and his angels don't come back anytime soon, but much of the world lives perpetually believing they will." But then I remembered something. "Wait a minute, the apostle Paul also saw the resurrected Jesus. But the replica of Jesus was on the spaceship, right?"

"Well, yes," said the Doctor. "The nanites are smart. They knew their creators' plans, and once they figure out they aren't receiving new orders, they'll strategize for themselves how best to spread further. Paul probably came into physical contact with a lot of Christians, receiving a higher than usual concentration of the nanites, which might allow them to mess a bit with his senses of sight and sound, presenting a vision of Jesus to him."

"Then the same thing must have happened to John, with his vision of heaven." It was the strangest feeling, thinking of these men as victims to be pitied, rather than greats to be admired. "Ugh. Isn't there any way to stop the things?"

"No. Not unless we kill everyone who's infected, and I can tell you right now, that's not going to happen. They'll break down eventually, though. They'll probably lose all ability to grant visions in about a century or so, and will finally cease functioning after a few millennia."

Lovely, I thought. And that means… "So is there no way to extract the nanites from my own brain, then?"

"Well…" the Doctor said, drawing out the word, hesitating. "Humans won't invent anything that can detect the nanites, let alone remove them, for tens of thousands of years. But, if we go far enough forward…"

"Could we? Please? I want to know what it would be like to be me. The true me."

"You are you! The nanites don't change that. Besides, weren't you just talking about how wicked your heart is?"

"Yes, but I've begun to wonder to what extent the nanites have contaminated my perception of myself. As long as these nanites are in me, I'll always be second-guessing myself, wondering how they're influencing my thoughts and actions."

"Their influence is resistible. If you don't want them to affect you, they won't!"

"I could agree with you in theory now, but in my daily life to come, I'm sure I'll always wonder. Call it a lack of faith," I said bitterly.

The Doctor looked at me, scanning my eyes. "Okay," he said, finally. "But this is your last trip. I only promised you one, you know. And after what happened…"

I lowered my eyes. It was funny, when I saw the corpses before, I felt sick. Now that I'd killed someone myself, I just felt numb. "I understand. I don't want to go home anyways."

The Doctor took a step back. "What? No, I'll take you home. I didn't mean it that way."

"But I did." I raised my eyes to stare grimly back into his. "Listen, all my friends and family back home were Christians. I love them all, and I'll miss them all. Terribly. But I could never justify abandoning my religion to them. They'll think I'm crazy if I tell them, "The aliens did it!" And I couldn't lie to them about why I turned away, or try to live with them while hiding my unbelief from them. No, the me that was perished here in the first century. The me that is needs a fresh start. Everyone that knew me will think I died in whatever freak accident is used to explain the corpses at the rest stop. It kills me that they'll never know the truth. But I don't know how I could explain it to them. So please, drop me off in whatever time is capable of destroying… the Holy Spirit."

"It doesn't work that way. You'll never be a native to that time period! And I won't stay to help you get adjusted to all the developments. Trying for a second home in time doesn't end well. I know, I've seen it."

"I'm certain that's true, if you drop me in the middle of some society with a lot of history. But surely, surely sometime during the eons, there's a more isolated location, a place where anyone can come with their questions, and can learn anything. A school of sorts, perhaps? Maybe it could even have the technology to download information directly to my brain, so that it wouldn't take any time at all for me to get adjusted to a new time zone. Someplace that, unlike the world I've known, could be a true home for the truth-lover. The wisdom-lover. The philosopher. Someplace where, who knows, if I learn enough, maybe I'll find whatever it was I thought I'd found in God."

"I…" the Doctor hesitated. "I think I do know a place like that. It's not paradise," he cautioned quickly. "But it has such technology, in a community of minds similar to yours. It's… a church of sorts, actually. Composed of people who worship knowledge and truth. I think you'd like it."

I nodded. "It sounds like it. Could we get these nanites removed, and check it out?"

"I… yes. We can."

We looked at one another in silence, me still feeling numb, like all my emotions had been spent back in that outburst, or after I'd become responsible for the death of another being. I wondered if I'd ever feel really strongly again. Sure, I still felt some worry about what was in store for me, some anger at what had happened to me, etc. But they felt like the feelings of an insect, so tiny that my soul barely paid attention to them. I imagined my sensitivity would grow back in time, but I wasn't sure if I wanted it to anymore. I suspected that if it did, the pain would be unbearable.

And then, as I was looking at the Doctor, I began to wonder what his story was. For some reason, uncharacteristically enough, I'd just taken him for granted, like time travelers fell from the sky, ready-made. But his eyes now were old and full of pain. The very pain that I had just been worried about, myself. What sort of experiences had given him such eyes? Had his entire belief system crashed to the ground around him? Had he been responsible for the death of another? How could he go on, retaining his emotional sensitivity, feeling every bit of the agony? I thought, staring into those eyes, I thought for quite possibly the very first time in my life, that I really did not want to know.

So I asked a different question instead, as the Doctor pulled away his gaze and started grabbing controls on the TARDIS. "You know, there's still one thing about this all that I don't understand. Where did Satan come from? I mean, there's mention of him in the Old Testament, but he also tempts Jesus in the gospels, for instance. Did that actually happen?"

"I, uh, doubt it," said the Doctor. "But he's real. Sort of. I… met him once. Long story."

I stared at him, dumbfounded. And then he pulled a switch, and we traveled through time.