Chapter 11
Forest of the Dead
High Dependancy Ward.
Royal Hope Hospital.
Chancellor Street, London.
'GAHK!' Rose was choking on something that was stuck in the back of her throat. She felt a tube being drawn out of her throat and mouth, causing her to cough.
'It's all right Sweetheart, it's all right Rose. Just breath, take some deep breaths,' a woman told her in a reassuring tone.
'Wha?' she breathed with a hoarse voice. 'Where am I?'
'Don't try and talk just yet, your vocal cords will be a little out of practice,' the woman said. 'You're in hospital, and you've just woken up. Welcome back.'
Rose felt too drowsy to ask the woman what she was on about, and drifted off to sleep. Some time later, she didn't know how long later, she woke up. She opened her eyes, and saw a young woman in theatre blues, adjusting an infusion pump on a stand next to the bed she was lying in.
'Hi,' the nurse said. 'How are you feeling?'
'Tired . . . No, weak,' Rose said.
'That's normal after what you've been through.'
'What do you mean, "What you've been through"? What have I been through?'
'Now don't you worry yourself about that right now. My name's Angela, I'm the nurse who's been looking after you. Doctor Moon will be along shortly to talk to you.'
'Doctor? Oh my God, the Doctor! Where is he?'
'Don't worry, Doctor Moon will be here soon.'
'No, not that doctor, my Doctor. My husband THE Doctor.'
'Oh right,' Angela said awkwardly. 'Doctor Moon will explain everything . . . ah, here he is now.'
Rose turned her head to look at the door, where a dark skinned man in a suit walked into the room.
'Hello Rose, my name is Doctor Moon. How are you feeling?'
'Confused,' she replied. 'What's goin' on? What am I doin' here?'
'You are here in hospital because you've been in a coma for the last few weeks.'
'Coma? Why the hell was I in a coma?'
'Ah, amnesia is common after a traumatic event. You were in a road traffic collision Rose. A car had a tyre blow out and the driver lost control. He collided with your car and forced it off the road, where it rolled down a bank and wrapped itself around a tree. It was a miracle you survived.'
'And where's my husband, the Doctor, is he in a coma as well?' She saw the look on Doctor Moon's face, and knew instantly that he wasn't in a coma. Tears started to well up in her eyes.
'I am so sorry Rose. Your husband didn't survive the crash. He . . . he was declared dead at the scene,' he said sadly.
'No!' Rose sobbed. 'He can't be dead. He can't.'
'I'm sorry Rose. His side of the car hit the tree, there was no way anyone could survive.'
'But you don't understand. He's not like normal men. He has this ability to regenerate,' she sobbed.
'Really?' he said with a frown. 'Does it have anything to do with a golden light?'
'Yes! Yes! It's how he cheats death. Did he do it?'
'Well, I didn't give the report any credence when I read it, but the paramedics who attended the incident reported seeing a golden mist travel from the driver to the passenger as they climbed down the bank.'
'No!' Rose cried. The Doctor had given her his Artron energy to save her life.
Her nurse Angela, sat on her bed and held her hand. 'I'm sorry about your husband Rose, but you have to focus on the future, on your baby.'
Rose gasped through her sobs. 'Oh my God. The baby. I didn't think. Is the baby all right?'
Doctor Moon smiled. 'The baby is fine. It's well protected in the thick muscle of the womb.'
Rose started to sob again, grabbing Angela in a desperate hug. 'Oh Doctor . . . Doctor . . . What am I gonna do without you?'
'Is there anyone we can contact for you?' Doctor Moon asked. 'Any family?'
'No. I'm all alone.'
The Library.
The Library Planet.
Somewhere amongst the massive shelves of books, the Doctor was standing on a box, trying to sonic a light fitting. 'Trying to boost the power. Light doesn't stop them, but it slows them down.'
'So, what's the plan? Do we have a plan?' River asked him.
The Doctor chose not to answer. 'Your screwdriver looks exactly like mine.'
'Yeah. You gave it to me.'
'I don't give my screwdriver to anyone.'
River gave him a saucy smile. 'I'm not anyone.'
'Who are you?'
It was River's turn not to answer. 'What's the plan?'
'I teleported Rose back to the TARDIS. If we don't get back there in under five hours, emergency program one will activate.'
'Take her home, yeah. We need to get a shift on,' River agreed, showing she knew more about the TARDIS than she should.
The Doctor checked the readings on his sonic screwdriver. 'She's not there, I should have received a signal. The console signals me if there's a teleport breach.'
'Well, maybe the coordinates have slipped. The equipment here's ancient.'
The Doctor hurried to a nearby Node. 'Rose Longbarrowmas. There's a Rose Longbarrowmas somewhere in this library. Do you have the software to locate her position?'
The Node turned its head, and the Doctor's hearts missed a beat. The Node had Rose's face. ['Rose Longbarrowmas has left the Library. Rose Longbarrowmas has been saved.']
'Rose,' he breathed.
['Rose Longbarrowmas has left the Library. Rose Longbarrowmas has been saved.']
'How can it be Rose? How's that possible?' River asked.
The Rose Node continued on a loop. ['Rose Longbarrowmas has left the Library. Rose Longbarrowmas has been saved.']
The Doctor stroked the Node's cheek. 'Rose.'
['Rose Longbarrowmas has left the Library.']
'Hey, who turned out the lights?' Proper Dave's communicator asked.
'Doctor!' River called to him, but he was transfixed by Rose's face.
'Doctor, we've got to go now!'
River and the Doctor ran, followed by Lux, the Other Dave and Anita. They came to a corner, and watched a shadow cover the floor, they were trapped between shadows.
'Doctor, what are we going to do?' River asked him.
'Hey, who turned out the lights?' Proper Dave's zombie asked as it lumbered down the corridor towards them.
['Rose Longbarrowmas has left the Library. Rose Longbarrowmas has been saved,'] they heard from the Node.
48 Bucknall House.
Powell Estate.
London.
Rose put the paintbrush in the coffee jar of white spirit and twirled it around, before putting a hand in the small of her back and straightening up with an "oof". Her other hand rubbed the bump in the front of her dungarees.
'Well kid. There ya go, all ready for your arrival,' she said to her unborn child. She walked out of the spare room of her old flat in Bucknall House, and headed for the kitchen to make a cup of tea, when there was a knock at the door.
'Doctor Moon!' she said as she opened the door. 'How nice to see you. Come in, come in. I was just about to make a cup of tea.'
'Thank you Rose; that would be lovely. You're looking well.'
'Yeah, I'm feelin' really good at the moment. I've just finished paintin' the nursery.'
'Don't over do it will you. It's not long now is it?'
'No, any day now . . . It's funny, but it doesn't seem like any time since I was in that hospital bed.'
'Yes,' he said with a smile. 'And then you thought about your baby, and here you are.'
'Yeah,' Rose said putting a mug of tea that she didn't remember making, on the kitchen table in front of him.
'And how are you coping Rose?'
Rose sat at the table opposite and smiled. The irony of being a single mum on the estate wasn't lost on her. There were plenty of young single mum's living in the flats, but she doubted any of them were widows.
'I'm coping fine thank you. Ru next door looks out for me, she an' Mum were always close. An' Billy Shakespeare from number 37 is always calling by.' She leaned forward conspiratorially. 'To be honest, I think he fancies me,' she said with a big grin. Doctor Moon laughed. It was good to see her smiling again.
'Charlie Dickens from across the way has always been like an uncle to me, an' Shareen and Keisha come over and keep me up to date on all the gossip. They are goin' to be such brilliant aunties.'
'It sounds like you've got a good support network.'
'Yeah, I never knew there was so much love on the estate,' she said with a sad smile.
Doctor Moon nodded. 'It's a shame, but it usually takes a tragedy to reveal it.'
Before Rose realised, they had drunk their tea, and Doctor Moon was ready to leave. Rose saw him to the door.
'I'll see you again soon Rose. Good luck with the birth.'
Rose kissed him on the cheek. 'Thank you. See you soon.' She watched him walk down the walkway to the stairs, and leant over the railings to look out over the estate. Something caught her eye in the courtyard below that sent a shiver down her spine. There was a woman, dressed in black, with a black veil over her face. And although her face was covered, Rose knew she was looking directly at her.
Rose straightened up and stepped back from the railings. She wasn't scared, just perturbed. She went back into the flat and shut the door.
The Library.
The Library Planet.
River took out a high tech pistol that the Doctor had seen before and aimed it at a wall. A square hole appeared in the wall. 'This way, quickly. Move!'
'Hey, who turned out the lights?' the Proper Dave zombie repeated as they ran down the corridor. River used her gun again, and gained access to another round room where a large orange moon could be seen hanging in the sky through the glass domed ceiling.
'OK, we've got a clear spot,' she told them. 'In, in, in! Right in the centre. In the middle of the light, quickly. Don't let your shadows cross. Doctor?'
The Doctor was on the floor, scanning the area. 'I'm doing it.'
'There's no lights here. Sunset's coming. We can't stay long. Have you found a live one?' River said.
'Maybe. It's getting harder to tell,' he said, banging his sonic with his palm. 'What's wrong with you?'
'We're going to need a chicken leg. Who's got a chicken leg?'
River asked the group. Other Dave took one out of his back pack.
'Thanks, Dave.' She threw the meat into the shadow, and once again it was just bone before it hit the ground.
'Okay. Okay, we've got a hot one. Watch your feet,' River warned.
'They won't attack until there's enough of them. But they've got our scent now. They're coming.'
'Oh, yeah, who is he? You haven't even told us. You just expect us to trust him?' Other Dave said.
'He's the Doctor,' River told them, as if that was explanation enough.
'And who is the Doctor?' Lux asked.
'The only story you'll ever tell, if you survive him,' River said.
'You say he's your friend, but he doesn't even know who you are,' Anita said.
'Listen, all you need to know is this. I'd trust that man to the end of the universe. And actually, we've been.'
'He doesn't act like he trusts you,' Anita observed.
'Yeah, there's a tiny problem. He hasn't met me yet,' she said as she went over to where the Doctor was still scanning shadows with his malfunctioning sonic screwdriver. 'What's wrong with it?'
'There's a signal coming from somewhere, interfering with it.'
'Then use the red settings.'
'It doesn't have a red setting.'
'Well, use the dampers.'
'It doesn't have dampers.'
'It will do one day,' River told him, offering him her sonic screwdriver.
The Doctor took River's sonic screwdriver. 'So, some time in the future, I just give you my screwdriver.'
'Yeah.'
'Why would I do that?'
'I didn't pluck it from your cold dead hands, if that's what you're worried about.'
'And I know that because?'
'Listen to me. You've lost your wife. You're angry. I understand. But you need to be less emotional, Doctor, right now.'
'Less emotional? I'm not emotional!'
'There are five people in this room still alive. Focus on that. Dear God, you're hard work young.'
'Young?' he asked with a frown. 'Who are you?'
'Oh, for heaven's sake!' Lux said. 'Look at the pair of you. We're all going to die right here, and you're just squabbling like an old married couple.'
That observation was too close for comfort for River. 'Doctor, one day I'm going to be someone that you trust completely, but I can't wait for you to find that out. So I'm going to prove it to you. And I'm sorry. I'm really very sorry.' She whispered a word in his ear, a Gallifreyan word. A word that only two people in the whole universe should know.
'Are we good?' she asked him, looking into his eyes. 'Doctor, are we good?'
When he heard his name, he knew who River was. Or more accurately, who she would become. 'Yeah, we're good,' he said sadly, knowing that at some point in his future he would lose Rose. He just hoped that future hadn't already begun.
'Good!' River took back her screwdriver and left him.
'Know what's interesting about my screwdriver?' he asked. 'Very hard to interfere with. Practically nothing's strong enough. Well, some hairdryers, but I'm working on that. So there is a very strong signal coming from somewhere, and it wasn't there before. So what's new? What's changed? Come on! What's new? What's different?'
'I don't know. Nothing,' Other Dave said. 'It's getting dark?'
'It's a screwdriver. It works in the dark . . . Moon rise. Tell me about the moon. What's there?'
Lux explained. 'It's not real. It was built as part of the Library. It's just a Doctor Moon.'
'What's a Doctor Moon?' the Doctor asked him.
'A virus checker. It supports and maintains the main computer at the core of the planet.'
' Well, still active. It's signalling. Look. Someone somewhere in this library is alive and communicating with the moon. Or, possibly alive and drying their hair. No, the signal is definitely coming from the moon. I'm blocking it, but it's trying to break through.'
A shimmering image of Rose appeared.
'Doctor!' River gasped.
'Rose!' he cried. She was alive. And then her image faded away.
'That was her!' River declared. 'That was your wife! Can you get her back? What was that?'
'Hold on, hold on, hold on. I'm trying to find the wavelength. Argh, I'm being blocked.'
'Professor?' Anita said quietly.
'Just a moment.'
'It's important . . . I have two shadows.'
'Okay. Helmets on, everyone,' River commanded. 'Anita, I'll get yours.'
'It didn't do Proper Dave any good,' Anita sobbed.
'Just keep it together, okay?' River said sympathetically.
'Keeping it together,' Anita told her. 'I'm only crying. I'm about to die. It's not an overreaction.'
River put the helmet over Anita's head.
'Hang on,' The Doctor said, and sonicked the visor black.
River gasped. 'Oh God, they've got inside.'
'No, no, no. I just tinted her visor. Maybe they'll think they're already in there, leave her alone.'
'Do you think they can be fooled like that?'
'Maybe. I don't know. It's a swarm. It's not like we chat.'
'Can you still see in there?' Other Dave asked her.
'Just about.'
'Just, just, just stay back,' the Doctor instructed. 'Professor, a quick word, please.'
'What?'
'Down here,' he said, crouching on the floor.
'What is it?'
'Look, you said there are five people still alive in this room,' he reminded her.
'Yeah, so?'
'So, why are there six?'
Behind the group, standing by a bookcase, was an astronaut with a skull in the visor. 'Hey, who turned out the lights?'
'RUUNNN!' the Doctor shouted.
'Hey, who turned out the lights?' the zombie repeated as it lurched towards them.
The group ran through a high level walkway to another Library skyscraper. 'Professor, go ahead,' the Doctor instructed. 'Find a safe spot.'
'It's a carnivorous swarm in a suit. You can't reason with it,' she argued.
'Five minutes.'
'Other Dave, stay with him. Pull him out when he's too stupid to live. Two minutes, Doctor.'
Zombie Dave barged through the doors. 'Hey, who turned out the lights?'
'You hear that? Those words? That is the very last thought of the man who wore that suit before you climbed inside and stripped his flesh. That's a man's soul trapped inside a neural relay, going round and round forever. Now, if you don't have the decency to let him go, how about this? Use him. Talk to me. It's easy. Neural relay. Just point and think. Use him, talk to me.'
'Hey, who turned out the lights?'
'The Vashta Nerada live on all the worlds in this system, but you hunt in forests. What are you doing in a library?'
'We should go. Doctor!' Other Dave said nervously.
'In a minute. You came to the Library to hunt. Why? Just tell me why?'
Zombie Dave stopped his advance. 'We-did-not,' an echoey voice said.
'Oh, hello,' the Doctor said in his "now here's trouble" tone of voice.
'We-did-not.'
'Take it easy, you'll get the hang of it. Did not what?'
'We-did-not-come-here.'
'Well, of course you did. Of course you came here.'
'We-come-from-here.'
'From here?'
'We-hatched-here.'
'But you hatch from trees. From spores in trees.'
'These-are-our-forests.'
'You're nowhere near a forest. Look around you.'
'These-are-our-forests.'
'You're not in a forest, you're in a library. There are no trees in a . . . library.' Of course! They were in a forest of books.
'We should go. Doctor!' Other Dave reminded him.
'Books. You came in the books. Microspores in a million, million books.'
'We should go. Doctor!'
The Doctor looked out over the city through a large window. 'Oh, look at that. The forests of the Vashta Nerada, pulped and printed and bound. A million, million books, hatching shadows.'
'We should go. Doctor!'
He turned to look at what used to be Other Dave. 'Oh, Dave! Oh Dave, I'm so sorry.' Other Dave was also a skeleton now.
'Hey, who turned out the lights?'
'We should go. Doctor!
'Thing about me, I'm stupid,' the Doctor told them. 'I talk too much. Always babbling on. This gob doesn't stop for anything. Want to know the only reason I'm still alive? Always stay near the door.'
The Doctor opened a trapdoor with his sonic screwdriver and dropped through the floor. He hung on to a support strut and inched his way along, screwdriver clenched between his teeth.
48 Bucknall House.
Powell Estate.
London.
Rose was sitting on the sofa, just where her mum used to sit, nursing her new born daughter. She had an enormous smile on her face and tears in her eyes. 'Oh your daddy would be so proud of you,' she told the infant as she wiped the tears from her cheeks. 'And your gran. They would, they would be burstin' with pride.'
She gently rubbed her cheek with her finger. 'An' we are gonna do so much together, you an' me. I'll teach you what your daddy taught me; that one person can make a difference. That you stand up for what you believe in. Oh we are gonna be magnificent, in his honour.'
After her daughter, Andrea Suzette had finished feeding, she stood up and patted her back to get her wind up, and then lay her down in her carry cot. Rose was suddenly aware of something flickering by the door to the balcony. When she looked up, her breath caught in her chest. It was the Doctor, with his brainy specs on. He was all shimmery and transparent, but it was him and he was looking right at her.
['Doctor!'] She heard River Song gasp.
['Rose!'] He cried.
'Doctor?!' Rose cried as she rushed forward, but he faded away, and all she was looking at was the view of the estate out of the window. 'What the hell is happenin' to me?'
She heard the letterbox rattle, and went to the front door. There was a folded piece of paper on the mat, which she picked up and unfolded. It was a message.
"Dear Rose, the world is wrong. Meet me at your usual play park, two o'clock tomorrow."
Recreational Play Area.
Powell Estate.
London.
Rose sat on a bench, watching her four year old daughter playing on the climbing frame. The mysterious woman dressed in black sat next to her.
'I got your note last night. "The world is wrong". What's that mean?' Rose asked her.
'No, you didn't.'
'I'm sorry, what?'
'You didn't get my note last night. You got it a few seconds ago. Having decided to come, you suddenly found yourself arriving. Last night your daughter was newborn, today she is what, four years old? That is how time progresses here, in the manner of a dream. You've suspected that before, haven't you, Rose Lungbarrowmas?'
'How do you know me?'
'We met before, in the Library. You were kind to me. I hope now to return that kindness.'
'Your voice. I recognise it.'
'Yes, you do. I am what is left of Miss Evangelista. I suggested we meet here because a playground is the easiest place to see it. To see the lie.'
'What lie?'
'The children. Look at the children.'
Rose looked at the children playing on the swings and climbing frames. 'Why do you wear that veil? If I had a face like yours, I wouldn't hide it.'
'You remember my face, then? The memories are all still there. The Library, the Doctor, me. You've just been programmed not to look.'
'Sorry, but you're dead.'
'In a way, we're all dead here, Rose. We are the dead of the Library.'
'Well, what about the children? The children aren't dead. My daughter isn't dead.'
'Your daughter was never alive.'
'Don't you say that. Don't you dare say that about my daughter!'
'Look at your daughter. Look at all of the children, really look.'
Rose looked closely, and noticed that all the children in the playground, boys and girls, had Andrea's face, repeated over and over.
'They're not real. Do you see it now? They're all the same. All the children of this world, the same boy and the same girl, over and over again.'
'Stop it. Just stop it. Why are you doin' this? Why are you wearin' that veil?' She pulled off Evangelista's veil. Her face was distorted, skewed and stretched. Rose screamed. 'What happened to your face?'
'Transcription errors. Destroyed my face, did wonders for my intellect. I'm a very poor copy of myself.'
'Where are we? Why are the children all the same?'
'The same pattern over and over. It saves an awful lot of space.'
'Space?'
'Cyberspace.'
'Your physical self is stored in the Library as an energy signature. It can be actualised again whenever you or the library requires.'
'The Library? If my face ends up on one of those statues . . .'
'You remember the statues?'
'Wait, no, just hang on. So this ain't the real me? This ain't my real body? But I've been dietin'.'
'What you see around you, this entire world; is nothing more than virtual reality.'
'So why do you look like that?'
'I had no choice. You teleported. You're a perfect reproduction. I was just a data ghost caught in the Wi-Fi and automatically uploaded.'
'An' it made you clever?'
'We're only strings of numbers in here. I think a decimal point may have shifted in my IQ. But my face has been the bigger advantage. I have the two qualities you require to see absolute truth. I am brilliant and unloved.'
'If this is all a dream, whose dream is it?'
'It's hard to see everything in the data core, even for me, but there is a word. Just one word. Cal.'
Andrea fell from the swing and started to cry. 'Mummy, my knee!'
Rose stood up and hurried over to her daughter. 'Oh! Oh, look at that knee. Oh, look at that silly old knee!'
'She's not real. She's fiction. I'm sorry, but now that you understand that, you won't be able to keep a hold. She is sustained only by your belief.'
'You don't know. You don't have children.'
'Neither do you. Rose, for your own sake, let her go!'
'Mummy, what did the lady mean? Aren't I real?' Andrea asked. Rose took her hand and led her away. 'Where are we going?'
'Home!'
48 Bucknall House.
Powell Estate.
London.
'That was quick, wasn't it, Mummy?' Andrea said and then looked out of the balcony window. 'Mummy, what's wrong with the sky?'
Rose looked out at the unnatural red sky and tensed up in fear. 'Mummy, you're hurting my hand.'
Rose was starting to panic. 'You just . . . you just stay where I can see you, all right? You, you don't get out of my sight.'
'Is it bedtime?' Andrea asked, and suddenly she was tucked up in bed.
'Okay. That was lovely, wasn't it? That was a lovely bedtime. We had warm milk, and we watched cartoons, and then Mummy read you a lovely bedtime story,' Rose said, trying to convince herself that she had really done that.
'Mummy, I'm not real, am I?'
'Of course you're real. You're as real as anything. Why do you say that?'
'But, Mummy, sometimes, when you're not here, it's like I'm not here. Even when you close your eyes, I just stop.'
'Well, Mummy promises to never close her eyes again.'
Rose blinked, and Andrea had vanished. 'No! Please! No, please! No! No, no! No, no!' Rose cried frantically.
The Library.
The Library Planet.
River and her remaining team were in another round room. She was checking the shadows with her screwdriver. 'You know, it's funny, I keep wishing the Doctor was here.
'The Doctor is here, isn't he?' Anita asked in confusion. 'He is coming back, right?'
'You know when you see a photograph of someone you know, but it's from years before you knew them, and it's like they're not quite finished. They're not done yet. Well, yes, the Doctor's here. He came when I called, just like he always does. But not my Doctor. Now my Doctor, I've seen whole armies turn and run away. And he'd just swagger off back to his TARDIS and open the doors with a snap of his fingers. The Doctor in the TARDIS. Next stop, everywhere.'
'Spoilers,' the Doctor said, walking into the room. 'Nobody can open a TARDIS by snapping their fingers. It doesn't work like that.
'It does for the Doctor.'
'I am the Doctor.'
'Yeah. Some day.'
'How are you doing?'
'Where's Other Dave?'
'Not coming. Sorry.'
'Well, if they've taken him, why haven't they gotten me yet?' Anita asked him.
'I don't know. Maybe tinting your visor's making a difference.'
'It's making a difference all right. No one's ever going to see my face again.'
'Can I get you anything?'
'An old age would be nice. Anything you can do?'
'I'm all over it.'
'Doctor. When we first met you, you didn't trust Professor Song.
And then she whispered a word in your ear, and you did. My life so far. I could do with a word like that. What did she say? Give a dead girl a break. Your secrets are safe with me.'
'Safe,' he said in sudden realisation.
'What?'
'Safe. You don't say saved. Nobody says saved. You say safe. The data fragment! What did it say?'
'Four thousand and twenty two people saved. No survivors,' Lux quoted.
'Doctor?' River asked.
'Nobody says saved. Nutters say saved. You say safe. You see, it didn't mean safe. It meant . . . it literally meant, saved!'
The Doctor went to a terminal and accessed the Library Archive File. 'See, there it is, right there. A hundred years ago, massive power surge. All the teleports going at once. Soon as the Vashta Nerada hit their hatching cycle, they attack. Someone hits the alarm. The computer tries to teleport everyone out.'
'It tried to teleport four thousand twenty two people?' River asked him.
'It succeeded. Pulled them all out, but then what? Nowhere to send them. Nowhere safe in the whole Library. Vashta Nerada growing in every shadow. Four thousand and twenty two people all beamed up and nowhere to go. They're stuck in the system, waiting to be sent, like emails. So what's a computer to do? What does a computer always do?'
River understood what he was implying. 'It saved them.'
The Doctor drew on a large polished table. 'The Library. A whole world of books, and right at the core, the biggest hard drive in history. The index to everything ever written, backup copies of every single book. The computer saved four thousand and twenty two people the only way a computer can. It saved them to the hard drive.'
The terminal screen suddenly went blank. 'No, no, no, no, no, no, no!' the Doctor called out.
The computer made an announcement. ['All Library systems are permanently offline. Sorry for any inconvenience. Shortly . . .']
'We need to stop this,' Lux said. 'We've got to save Cal.'
'What is it? What is Cal?' the Doctor asked him.
'We need to get to the main computer. I'll show you. Doctor: It's at the core of the planet.'
'Well, then. Let's go.' River said, pointing her screwdriver at the Library logo in the middle of the compass rose in the floor. It opened up to reveal a floating platform. 'Gravity platform.'
'I bet I like you,' the Doctor said with a grin.
'Oh, you do,' River replied with a grin of her own.
The four of them stepped on to the platform, and started to descend. They arrived at the data core and an automated voice echoed in the room. [ 'Autodestruct in fifteen minutes.']
The Doctor looked up to see a globe with swirling energy inside it. 'The data core. Over four thousand living minds trapped inside it.'
'Yeah, well, they won't be living much longer. We're running out of time,' River told him.
The Doctor found an access terminal and logged on. ['Help me. Please, help me,'] a young girl's voice pleaded.
'What's that?' Anita asked.
'Was that a child?' asked River.
The Doctor worked on the terminal. 'The computer's in sleep mode. I can't wake it up. I'm trying.'
'Doctor, these readings,' River said.
'I know. You'd think it was dreaming.'
'It is dreaming,' Lux told them. 'Of a normal life, and a lovely Dad, and of every book ever written.'
'Computers don't dream,' Anita said.
['Help me. Please help me,'] the girl pleaded again.
'No, but little girls do,' Lux said, pulling a circuit breaker to open a door. They ran inside, and a Node turned to face them.
['Please help me. Please help me,'] the girl's face said.
River gasped. 'Oh, my God.'
'It's the little girl. The girl we saw in the computer,' Anita realised.
'She's not in the computer. In a way, she is the computer. The main command node. This is Cal,' Lux informed them.
'Cal is a child?' the Doctor said in amazement. 'A child hooked up to a mainframe? Why didn't you tell me this? I needed to know this!'
'Because she's family! Cal. Charlotte Abigail Lux. My grandfather's youngest daughter. She was dying, so he built her a library and put her living mind inside, with a moon to watch over her, and all of human history to pass the time. Any era to live in, any book to read. She loved books more than anything, and he gave her them all. He asked only that she be left in peace. A secret, not a freak show.'
'So you weren't protecting a patent, you were protecting her,' the Doctor said quietly.
'This is only half a life, of course. But it's for ever.'
'And then the shadows came.'
['The shadows. I have to. I have to save. Have to save.']
'And she saved them. She saved everyone in the Library. Folded them into her dreams and kept them safe.'
'Then why didn't she tell us?' Anita asked.
'Because she's forgotten. She's got over four thousand living minds chatting away inside her head. It must be like being, well . . . me.'
'So what do we do?' River asked.
['Autodestruct in ten minutes,'] the computer announced.
The Doctor went back to the data core. 'Easy! We beam all the people out of the data core. The computer will reset and stop the countdown . . . Difficult. Charlotte doesn't have enough memory space left to make the transfer. Easy! I'll hook myself up to the computer. She can borrow my memory space.'
'Difficult,' River said. 'It'll kill you stone dead.'
'Yeah, it's easy to criticise.'
'It'll burn out both your hearts and don't think you'll regenerate.'
'I'll try my hardest not to die. Honestly, it's my main thing.'
'Doctor!' River said sharply.
'I'm right, this works. Shut up. Now listen. You and Luxy boy, back up to the main library. Prime any data cells you can find for maximum download, and before you say anything else, Professor, can I just mention in passing as you're here . . . shut up.'
'Oh! I hate you sometimes.'
'I know!'
'Mister Lux, with me. Anita, if he dies, I'll kill him!' River said as they left the data core.
