Much as you may have seen some similarities between the Tenth Doctor's current conflict in my story and the conflict of the Eleventh (canon) Doctor on Trenzalore, you might find some new similarities in this chapter. Namely, some stuff from Journey's End. Again, rest assured, I was not trying to call up images of Journey's End!
In my story, this "solution" just happened, as a by-product of the Doctor's giant bluff. Chapter 20 was the juicy, incendiary means-to-an-end. In this chapter we will see what that "end" might turn out to be.
But it's still not the end... ;-) Especially given the ethical questions involved.
Enjoy!
TWENTY-ONE
The Doctor paced in the warm pink anteroom. The pristine, light-mauve carpet irritated him. Something so soft and clean in a place that had drummed-up so many nasty, messy complications... it just seemed wrong. He was glad that his Converse were leaving footprints. He felt like toppling a couple of the vases of fresh flowers as well. The place needed a good mussing-up, in his opinion.
On each pass by the television that projected the image of the Tactile Room, he looked up with worry in his eyes. Martha sat in the subject's chair, fidgeting. She was biting her nails, crossing and re-crossing her legs, trying to quell her nervousness. She had endured a week of the Doctor sitting in that chair, traversing all manner of unpleasant (and pleasant) memories, psychic debris that came, literally, from out of time itself. He had unravelled emotionally, though it was temporary and to varying degrees. She was understandably afraid of the Welling, though she knew it would be nothing like what he had experienced.
"Hello, Doctor," Vissa said, coming through a side door. She sounded weary. "Thank you for repairing the Tactile Room podium."
He stopped pacing and faced her. "Okay, what's this all about? Why am I here? I should be in there with her! She's going to need my support!" His arm flew to one side, gesturing toward the screen.
In a maddeningly calm voice, she said, "Relax, you'll be with her in a moment. I just wanted to ask you... if you're sure about this."
"You want to ask me if I'm sure?" he said, his voice rising in pitch.
"Well, I can't help but remember what you said about the ethics and implications of reconstituting a living being and..."
"Oh, that's rich, Vissa. That's richy-rich-rich! After everything that has happened, all I've said to you, all you've done to me, all the times you have not listened and after how I've tried to help you anyway, you are now lecturing me on the ethics of how to use this technology? Are you trying to make my head explode, or is that just going to be an entertaining side-effect?" He was shouting now.
"Doctor, I'm giving you a pass," she said.
"A pass?"
"You have made a promise that we both know you cannot keep."
"Don't do this to me, Vissa," he growled.
"You have put the Lettrixians into a holding pattern around our planet, and pledged yourself to us, in order to keep that holding pattern in stasis. Thank you. Honestly, thank you for your help. But, much as before, you are bluffing. Only... perhaps you don't know it. So I'm giving you a pass."
"You said that already."
"And I meant it. Doctor, just go," she said. "You have my permission to leave Prissentra. I've already spoken with Zefura, and she is prepared to convene a strategic force once you have gone."
"You won't be able to fight them," he said. "You saw it in my mind, remember? You saw what will happen when they come into your cities."
"If that's the price we have to pay for our arrogance, then so be it."
"Your arrogance?" he asked, surprised.
"You were right about this technology, Doctor," she admitted, quietly. "It's too dangerous to exist. Outside of Time Lord hands, I mean. We had no business playing with atemporal molecular analysis and Veridic holograms. It was a ticking time-bomb from the start."
"And you're saying, having the Lettrixians bring their flying squid into the capital and vaporise people in the streets is your punishment?"
She shrugged slightly.
"How is their death punishment for you, then?"
She shrugged again, looking at him sadly.
"It's not, that's how," he snapped.
"Then turn me over to them as a trade," she offered. "Let them kill me. Let them take me prisoner, or do whatever they're going to do."
"That won't stop them from destroying innocent people, Vissa. And it won't stop them getting the technology."
"So destroy the technology!"
"It won't help," he said, getting loud again. "They'll just want to punish you even more. And then, if my centuries of experience are of any help, I predict that they will then hold some of your sciencey-types hostage, and their families, and force them to rebuild it."
"That won't work. Our scientists would die before turning over that power."
"Die themselves, maybe," he conceded. "But if you think your scientists would rather sacrifice the lives of their children than turn over that power..."
She sighed. "Okay, I get it," she was exasperated now. Her voice went hard. "I ask you, then what's the alternative, Doctor?"
"I've told you," he said. "There's already a plan in motion. Martha is in that room, ready to carry out the next step."
"What if it splinters your mind?" she asked.
"What?"
"Can the atemporal molecular analysis recreate your brain in all of its complexity?" she asked. "It's a given that the new being needs to have not just consciousness, but also intelligence to some degree, or the ruse will not work. What if the technology is not powerful enough for your mind, and in order to survive, the new being needs a part of you? Then there will be two of you, neither of which are operating at full capacity. And that leaves the whole universe - all of time and space - vulnerable, not just Prissentra."
He looked at her with wide eyes. He had considered this himself, but he had not expected Vissa to have considered it.
He shook off his surprise, and continued to pace. "Those chances are remote. Most likely what will happen is the new being will have its own consciousness and intelligence, just not quite at the level of my intelligence. The molecular analysis will be enough to re-create my mannerisms and voice, some of my surface thoughts, but not, perhaps, the Time-Lordy stuff. Or, maybe it will! The mechanism was originally developed by Time Lords. It is fairly sophisticated..."
"And how long will it live, the new being?" she asked, with her hands on her hips. The Doctor did not fancy her judgmental air.
He scoffed, "I don't know."
"No, you don't. You know that its life-span is totally unpredictable."
"It might have my regenerative qualities."
"Or it might not."
"It might live centuries, Vissa."
"Or it might not," she pointed out. "Even if it does, then what? Used the saved data and make a new one? Just keep pumping out living beings as spare parts?"
He had no idea what to say. It wasn't as though none of this had occurred to him... he just didn't have any actual good ideas.
Vissa continued, "Come to that, even if you threw out all other considerations: your restless nature, your obligations to the rest of the universe, not to mention Miss Jones... even if you actually stayed for the rest of your life, then what? Sooner or later, our planet is left exposed, with no Doctor."
He was silent, and he crossed his arms defensively and stared at that annoying pink carpet.
"That's why I say, you have made a promise you can't keep," she said, when he did not respond.
"It's the only solution we have." His voice was barely audible.
"Well," she conceded, gently. "You are a fighter who nevertheless always gives his opponent a chance to escape. I have learned a lot from you, Doctor, and I admire your style. So, I am giving you a chance to escape. Take it."
"I can't. I can't leave this planet exposed. Not when I could save it."
"You can't."
"I have to try."
They stared at each other for a few long moments.
"You are quite possibly the most stubborn man I have ever met," she told him, exasperated.
He smiled wearily. "Oddly enough, you're not the first person to tell me that."
"The council voted about an hour ago to defer to you on all decisions in this matter, so I do not have the authority to override you at this juncture. I offered you an out, but your decision is not to take it, even though what you're proposing is dangerous, unethical and has limited potential for effectiveness. Is that correct?"
"Covering your arse, are you, Vissa?"
"You bet I am," she said. She gestured to the screen, which showed Martha, still sitting nervously in the subject's chair in the Tactile Room. "Now, get in there and hold her hand, if we're going to do this."
Even with the stabilising pulse, even with the Doctor's lulling voice, even in the heat, Martha was too nervous to go into a trance state quickly. She had very little experience with meditation, and she needed to give herself over completely to the process, in order for it to work properly.
But once she was under, the tactile experience came immediately to the surface, without much prodding. It had been extremely recent, and extremely important.
"Think of the Doctor, Miss Jones," Vissa's voice encouraged softly. Martha's hand instinctively squeezed his. After a pause, Vissa continued, "Think of that man, whom you love more than anything else. Let that love fill you up now, let it meld with the air and heat in the room, and sink into your skin."
Martha had no choice but to let it infuse her, and let the prickles of Doctor stretch over her arms, legs, chest, back and face. She found it almost painful. But then, she always had.
"Start from the bottom, Martha," Vissa said. "Toes, arches, instep, ankles. Yes?"
"Yes," Martha whispered, and smiled slightly, as a glimmer of feet began to form in the holographic field. They were solid, exact and pretty well symmetrical.
"Keep going," Vissa told her.
And in her head, Martha recreated the experience of kneeling down and running her hands up the backs of the Doctor's legs. The shape and texture were fresh in her mind, the emotion she felt at the time, and suddenly, the hologram had calves. She thought about the bony shins and bent knees, and involuntarily, her free hand moved, fingers against fingers, trying to call up texture. The hologram manifested accordingly.
Vaguely, from miles away, she could hear the Doctor himself say, "Wow."
For a long moment, the figure in the holographic field lingered this way, as Martha dwelt on the memories.
Vissa coaxed her along. "Shall we continue above the knees?"
It was at this point when even in her trance state, she could feel nervousness in the pit of her stomach.
She had run her hands up the backs of his thighs as well, and she remembered being brave enough to venture her fingers a little past the hem of his shorts. And when she had stood up, she had indulged her fingers in the shape of his bum. The hologram glowed brighter momentarily, as a surge of excitement bled through.
And then there was the experience of sitting astride him with her own legs clenching against his. Even this felt vivid and tactile. She could almost still feel the width of his legs, and the resistance provided by the muscles. And it was packaged with memories of her arms against his chest, her bare skin against his stomach, lips against his lips, hands moving down his arms and the size of his hands grasping her waist and hips. In patches, the upper body of the Doctor manifested in hologram form, and over the next few minutes, with a little help from questions from Vissa, the details appeared.
As expected, Martha's tactile memories of the Doctor's physical form had been remarkably stable and exact.
When the Doctor's clicking fingers brought her round again, she turned and looked at the stage, hoping to see what she had created. However, she only found an empty field.
"We saved it, don't worry," said Vissa.
"Are you all right?" asked the Doctor.
Upon reflection, she felt deflated, and somehow defeated. Her arms felt like anvils, and she felt empty inside.
She couldn't really bring herself to articulate it, so she looked up at him and just shook her head.
He hugged her. "Oh, I'm sorry."
"It's okay," she said with her cheek pressed to his lapel. "If it works, it'll be worth it."