How is everyone? Hopefully all is well with everyone today. I had to go to the dentist. Have to say I'm not a big fan of them, mainly because I can't stand that clincal smell. I don't have anything against dentists as people, just in case you, who are reading this, are a dentist. Just don't like the smell, same with hospitals.
Sorry, rambling...moving swiftly on.
So we are into the third chapter of Boom Town and gearing up to the two big chapters. Once again, thank you for all those that reviewed, grapejuice101, Shaybo27, LifeShutterSpeed, TheGirlWhoImagined, and Ryn of Magic. You all get virtual cookies. To all those that didn't review...well thanks for reading the chapter anyway.
Either way, onwards and upwards.
Boom Town: Part 3
After we had finally captured Margaret, we frogmarched her to the meeting room where there was the large model of what had to be the nuclear power station that we had read about in the newspaper. I was still wondering about Jack though, how had he managed to get rid of the coat so quickly. It had been a nice coat as well, "So, you're a Slitheen," the Doctor noted as we entered the room, "You're on Earth, your family gets killed but you teleported out, just in the nick of time. You're alone, you're trapped, no means of escape, so what do you do?" we all looked at the large model, "You build a nuclear power station, that happens to be right on top of the Rift. What for?"
Margaret looked rather contrite at us, "A philanthropic gesture," she said and I scoffed audibly. If I was bad at lying then she had to be even worse, "I've learnt the error of my ways," she looked at all of our unconvinced faces. She had laughed at us while we were in Downing Street, trapped inside that Cabinet Room with no way, that the Slitheen knew, of contact the outside world. Apologies but I wasn't feeling particularly generous towards her when she had nearly killed all of us in a haze of nuclear weaponry, "And what Rift would you be talking about,"
"A Rift in space and time," Jack told her, "Now it's closed, but the scar is right below the main reactor, and if that power station went into meltdown, it would open the Rift. Instant catastrophe, the whole planet goes..." he made the noise of a very loud explosion, "So the whole station is designed to explode the moment it reaches capacity," he looked at Margaret, "A very unusual philanthropic gesture by the way, ripping apart a planet. I'm sure everyone here will be very kind and thank you for the gesture," she just looked sour at his words.
"But didn't anyone notice?" Rose asked her, and I looked at Rose. I hadn't thought of that, she was very good at that, seeing the little details that would pass everyone else by. Hadn't even crossed my mind that London would think, "Isn't there someone in London checking this sort of stuff. I mean," she shrugged, "Big nuclear power station being built right on top of Cardiff, you would think that there would be hundreds of officials wandering around looking at what was happening all the way down here in Cardiff,"
Margaret scoffed, "We're in Cardiff," she replied to her, "London doesn't care. The South Wales coast could fall into the sea an they wouldn't notice..." she trailed off, looking slightly horrified at herself, "Oh I sound like a Welshman," she looked at us, "God help me, I've gone native,"
"But why?" Rose insisted, and I grabbed a chair, from the side, looking at the model in front of us, "I mean, why would she do all that? Great big explosion, she would just end up ripping herself apart along with the rest of us. There isn't any point to building this whole thing when she would kill herself when the whole thing exploded and pulled the rift apart," Margaret glared at her, "Sorry, but it's true. You teleported to safety, leaving the rest of your family alone to die in the missile at Downing Street, and then you kill yourself by blowing up a nuclear power station. Unless you're suicidal, there's no point to it,"
"Oh, but she is clever," the Doctor told us, before pushing over the towers on the model and ripping up something from it. He flipped it over to show what looked like a massive circuit board underneath, complete with flashing lights and wires. Something tells me that wasn't exactly in the design for the nuclear power station, "Absolutely fantastic,"
Jack's eyes however had gotten really very wide, "Is that a tribophysical waveform microkinetic extrapolator?" he asked, taking it from the Doctor to stare at the circuit board with awe and wonder. However what he just said completely passed over my head. I didn't know what the hell he just said, "You didn't build this," he told Margaret, who looked like she was about to argue, "No, you really, really didn't build this, way beyond you," he placed it on the floor, "It's transport," he told Rose, Mickey and me, "You see, when the reactor blows up, the rift opens, huge cosmic disaster, but this thing shrouds you in this force field, an energy bubble, all around you, so you're safe. Then you feed it coordinates, stand on top, and ride the concussion all the way out of the solar system," he grinned, "Basically a pan-dimensional surfboard,"
"And I would have done it," Margaret snarled at us, "It would have worked so beautifully, and if you hadn't have ended up here then no one would have even questioned it. I would have sailed away from this dead end dump and back to civilisation before anyone would have noticed. Just like stepping on an ant hill, and nothing would have saved this planet," well that was a very nice gesture in itself. Wonderful. Not.
"How did you think of the name?" I turned to see the Doctor standing at the end of the room looking up at the sign that proclaimed the name of the project. Blaid Drwg, what was so special about that? It was just a name, "I mean I know that it's Welsh but how did you think of calling the project this precisely?"
"I don't know," the Slitheen in disguise moved around the table, clearly not bothered with his questioning the same as the rest of us weren't particularly bothered either, "Blaid Drwg, it's Welsh, and it sounded good, so I used it. Chose it pretty much at random if I'm honest," she looked speculatively at him, "Does it matter?"
"Blaid Drwg," the Doctor turned around to look at us, "Do you know what Blaid Drwg is in English?" he asked us and I shook my head. Did it matter? Was it relevant? "It means Bad Wolf," a cold iciness spread through my veins at that. Wolves...that wasn't good in any way I thought about it. I looked over to Margaret Blaine, she had chosen to name a nuclear power project: Bad Wolf? Rather odd name for a project at any point in time.
"But..." Rose started, "I've heard that before. Bad Wolf," I looked over at her, frowning. What was she talking about. I couldn't remember seeing the words Bad Wolf before now, "I've heard that lots of times," she turned to me, "Gwyneth said something about the Bad Wolf, and then it was spray painted on the side of the TARDIS and then..." she trailed off, thinking about it hard, "Then I think it was painted on the wall when we went to 1987. Everywhere we go, Bad Wolf, just Bad Wolf," I couldn't think of what she was talking about, "Don't you remember?"
"Bad Wolf sounds like a very poor name for a band," I said, shrugging, "I don't remember anything about Bad Wolf before, but I would say that I wouldn't personally go near anything that mentioned the word: wolf," she rolled her eyes, but still just looked worried. Whatever it was, it probably had her rather spooked. "It's probably just something that you heard somewhere," I reassured her. I hated wolves but I wasn't worried about a couple of words on a nuclear power project, "It's like hearing a particular word on the radio and then then hearing it all day," she still didn't look particularly reassured, but I turned to the Doctor, "So what do we do with her?" I nodded at Margaret.
"Take her back home," he said bluntly, "Raxacoricofallapatorius is a nice place, there are decent people. They can decide to do what to do with her," he looked at Margaret, "Hope you don't mind, we'll drop you there when the TARDIS has refuelled and then be on our way. No problem whatsoever,"
"I can't believe it," Rose smiled at the Doctor, "We actually get to go to Raxa..." she stuttered, and the Doctor rolled his eyes, "No, hold on, wait a minute, Raxacorico...fallapatorius," she spelt out slowly, "Raxacoricofallapatorius. I did it!" she grinned, the Doctor hugging her with a wide grin on his face, and I smiled at her infectious happiness.
"They have the death penalty," Margaret announced and all our smiles dropped from our faces. Awkward, "The family Slitheen were tried in their absence many years ago and found guilty with no chance of appeal. According to the statues of government I am to be executed the moment that I return," Now that was extremely awkward, it was one thing taking someone home to their planet to leave them to the authorities but a completely different thing to take them home while knowing that they were to be executed, "What do you make of that, Doctor?" she inquired of him, "Take me home and you'll take me to my death,"
I stared at the Doctor, who merely looked back at Margaret, "Not my problem," he said calmly. It was just like with Cassandra's death all that time ago on Platform One, that I couldn't see that she should live when so many others had died. However there was that flutter deep within me, that knowledge biting away that I should let her go. It was wonderful when everyone lived, but I had never protested against the deaths of Cassandra, or the Slitheen in Downing Street, the Dalek, the Editor and the Jagrafess. Because they had killed, I spared no thought to when they were killed. And now it was biting at me to remember that, "Come on," the Doctor shook me out of my thoughts, "Let's get back to the TARDIS, and Jack, bring the extrapolator,"
"Like you could stop me," my friend said walking behind Margaret, carrying the large extrapolator in his hands, "Forward march, if you please," Margaret shot one baleful glare at the room before walking out of the room after the Doctor. I quickly fell in line with the Doctor when we reached Cardiff Bay. I noted that he was strangely silent, unlike he was usually.
"It makes you wonder, doesn't it," I murmured to him, "Whether you think that what we're doing is right or not," he didn't answer me, but I knew that he was thinking about it, so I pressed on. We were walking quite a way from the other three, so we could be out of earshot from them if we spoke quietly but able to catch Margaret if she caught us, "I mean it's not like she's dying like the Jagrafess because it was Cathica, or the Dalek because it wanted to, but this is us...delivering her literally to death's door. It's a little different to what is generally the normal for us,"
He turned to look at me "Could you do it?" he asked, "Could you send her back home although knowing that she will be executed?" he grasped both my hands, "She did try to kill us in Downing Street, remember. They were going to rip apart the Earth then, and she was going to do the same thing for slightly different reasons now. She hasn't changed, it's still the same ideas with her. Killing thousands for a profit of some sort,"
I hesitated, "I know, Doctor, I know that she's a killer," I swayed slightly, looking out at the sea, the TARDIS slightly behind us, "I suppose the main reason that I don't like it is that we're actually taking her to her death, she didn't just die because of something else. If we take her back to Raxacoricofallapatorius, does that make us as back as she is? Or are we just doing the world a favour and this is the right thing to do?"
He looked at me long and hard, before saying, "We better get into the TARDIS, we don't want Margaret running loose in there," and just by saying that I knew that he was having just as much trouble as I was trying to draw the lines between what we did was right and what we did was easy for us to do. He smiled at me, "We don't want to get cold standing around here like chickens, do we?"
I smiled slightly, walking back with him, my woolly hat still jammed on my head, "No, of course we don't," I replied, "Back we go to the TARDIS, where it is nice and warm, where Jack, Rose and Rickey are," and where there was a potentially mass murdering alien as well, which we were going to send to her death. I didn't say this out loud to the Doctor, thinking it over. This was just what I needed from Cardiff, an ethical debate coming from someone who had tried to kill us.
Margaret however was having no such problem being back in the TARDIS. She was fascinated with every surface, every button on the console, even the structures that held up the roof. However she was most fascinated with how the TARDIS was bigger on the inside, which was understandable, "Oh but this ship is impossible," she grinned, "It's superb," and that was a little bit different to what she was saying a couple of months ago in the middle of Downing Street, "How do you get the inside around the outside?" she asked the Doctor who looked amused but didn't answer her, "I almost feel better about being defeated, we never stood a chance. This is the technology of the Gods,"
"Ohh, I wouldn't start worshipping me," the Doctor informed her bluntly, fixing some wires, "I'd make a very bad God. Very few people would get a day off for instance," he grinned at me before looking down at Jack who was under the console busy trying to link the extrapolator to the console, "Jack, how we doing, big fella?"
The other man poked his head out to look at us, "This extrapolator is top of the range," he remarked, narrowing his eyes at Margaret, "Where did you get it?" the woman pretended not to hear him, "Bet it was a great big heist, it's stacked with power," he looked over to the Doctor, "It'll take a bit of work, it's not compatible, but it should knock off around twelve hours. We'll be ready to go by morning,"
"We've got a prisoner," Rose noted, smiling, "That's weird, the police box is actually a police box," I sat back at that, the thought running through my mind. It was a slightly kind look on what we actually were in terms of Margaret's imprisonment here.
Clearly she agreed with that thought because the Slitheen merely smiled at us, rolling a metallic silver ball between her hands, "You're not just police, though," she said sweetly, and I had a very bad sense of foreboding at whatever she was going to say next, "Since you're taking me to my death, that makes you my executioners," now that was a great way of rubbing it into what was already becoming a very sore wound for me, "Each and every one of you," I looked up at the ceiling not wanting to meet her eyes about this. This was already becoming a very bad idea.
"Well you deserve it," Mickey said to her bluntly.
"You're very quick to say so," she retorted, "And yet, very quick to soak your hands in my blood. Which makes you better than me, how exactly?" there wasn't an answer from any of us, all of us not liking where this conversation was quickly going, "Long night ahead," I looked quickly over to her, seeing her sit down on the console seat, before looking swiftly away, "Let's see who can look me in the eye,"
I stubbornly didn't look at her, which probably only served to make her feel vindicated and me in even more turmoil over the whole process. What the hell were we supposed to do about this now?
So what did you think? Good, bad, ugly?
To the whole Jack thing last chapter yesterday. I figured that it was more a self fullfilling paradox. Jack could have only been there if Alice had seen him and mentioned it because she saw him. Paradoxs are confusing plus I figured that it's honestly not the strangest thing seen on Doctor Who, and I think that the whole Bad Wolf was also a self fulfilling paradox as well.
Plus I had fun writing that bit :)
I love people's input, and constructive criticism. Or even just a smiley face. I like smiley faces.
See you soon.
:)
