Very Fine Daleks

by TerryBalls

A Doctor Who parody of the modern alt-right set on the moons of Jupiter.

A/N: This is the fourth story in my Twelve/Sally series. I recommend reading the previous parts first. You may find it easier to read them on ao3.

Chapter 1

"He's a Dalek," Libby said.

Brian rolled his eyes at her. "Always with the hyperbole. The Daleks invaded Earth three times. They killed billions. You're making light of the atrocities that the Daleks committed when you compare people like Krat to the Daleks."

Krat was definitely a Dalek. He had the eyestalk, the whisk gun, and the plunger arm, he spoke in a screeching robotic voice, and his solution to everything was exterminating inferior races. Nonetheless, he was constantly getting booked for TV interviews like the one we were watching.

"What do you say to those who accuse you of being a Dalek?" said the interviewer.

"I AM NOT A DAAAA-LEK," said Dalek Krat. "THESE SORTS OF COMPAAAAARISONS ARE POI-SON-ING OUR POL-I-TIC-AL DIS-COURSE. I AM OPPOSED TO THE DA-LEKS – WHO, IN-CI-DEN-TAL-LY, WERE EXTREMELY LEFT-WING. I WOULD DESCRIBE MYSELF AS A CLASSIC SPECIES REAL-IST."

"That sounds fair to me. How would you distinguish between a Dalek and a Classic Species Realist?"

"WELL, JER-E-MY, A DALEK WISHES TO EX-TER-MIN-ATE ALL INFERIOR SPECIES. AS A CLASSIC SPECIES REALIST, I SIMPLY BELIEVE IN OPEN DIALOGUE ABOUT THE INFERIOR NATURE OF NON-DALEK LIFE FORMS. SPECIES SHOULD ASSUME ROLES TO WHICH THEY ARE SUITABLE: FOR EXAMPLE, HUMANS ARE NATURALLY SUITED TO SLAVE LABOUR AND DEATH. BUT SOLIDARITY WARRIORS DON'T LIKE IT WHEN I SAY THAT. INSTEAD OF DEBATING MY POINTS, THEY TRY TO SILENCE ME. WHY DO THEY FEAR THE TRUTH?"

"Dalek Krat, as always, you make many valid points. Helen Grant from the Solidarity Party, do you have anything to say in response?"

"Dalek Krat is a Dalek…"

"YET AGAIN, INSTEAD OF DISCUSSING MY POINTS, THE LEFT TRIES TO SILENCE ME!"

"You just interrupted me!"

"STOP GETTING EM-O-TION-AL."

"I'm sorry, Ms Grant, you really should apologise to Dalek Krat."

"I won't apologise for describing…"

"Dalek Krat has made it clear that he is not a Dalek."

"But-"

"And this concludes our debate. Tune in next week when we will be debating whether Zygons have too much power in our society."

This was sadly typical. These days everybody was tripping over themselves to show their commitment to "balance" by inviting Daleks to give their thoughts. TV shows, newspapers, radio – all of them were giving ample platforms to the likes of Krat. Even the internet seems to be reluctant to moderate Dalek content.

"I know you don't agree with everything Krat says," said Brian, "but you've got to admit, he is probably the greatest public intellectual of our time."

"Krat is an idiot, with no appreciation for subtlety or nuance and refusing to consider any new ideas," said Libby.

"He speaks common sense – something you don't often get from the mainstream media. Really, what's wrong with wanting people to stick to their own kind and do the jobs they are good at?"

"Sticking to your own kind is speciesist…"

"Seriously, Libby, why do you always try name calling? Everyone who disagrees with you is either a Dalek or a speciesist."

No, thought Libby, I just only bother vocally disagreeing with Daleks. But arguing with Brian was useless. He was a conscientious housemate, and even pleasant to be around, as long as politics didn't come up. As soon as they did, though, oh boy. Brian was bigoted and boorish, there was no getting away from it. He was generally superficially nice to Libby, but she always avoided speaking to him about her experiences as a black disabled woman. He wouldn't be sympathetic.

So, for her own sanity, Libby left the house. She trundled down to the local food van and bought some fried grasshoppers. She ate them in the park, watching the ducks on the pond. There was a group of six friends stood near her, looking up at the sky. One was openly a Zygon, one of the men was brown, and the two women were holding hands – one of them even had prosthetic legs. This was a good sign. She went over to them.

"First time on Callisto?" she said, brightly.

The oldest of them – as far as Libby could tell – was a grey-haired man in a red velvet jacket. "Have you noticed the Daleks?" he said.

Well, this conversation was going better than Libby could have hoped for. "Oh, thank you! Yes, I've noticed the Daleks."

"Finally, someone around here who can see what's right in front of their face," he said. "I'm the Doctor. This is Nardole," a bald-headed white man waved at her, "Sally, Róisín, Mo, and Clyde the Zygon."

"Just 'Clyde', thanks."

"I'm Libby."

"Why isn't everyone looking at this?" said one of the women. Only the Doctor and Nardole had looked down from the sky. It wasn't full of Dalek saucers. Instead, Jupiter loomed large, its swirling red eye just about distinguishable. Ganymede was also visible, with New Heraklion lit up on its dark side.

"Honestly, you get used to it," Libby said. "The view from Titan is better."

"Oh, I'm sure," the woman said.

"Where is Titan?" her girlfriend – or wife? – asked quietly. Where had these people come from, if they didn't know where Titan was?

"It's the largest moon of Saturn. Second largest moon in the Solar System."

"Behind home?" They were Vogans? Libby thought humans couldn't survive on Voga, and they didn't look like any native Vogans that Libby had ever met.

"No, Sally, behind Ganymede," said… Róisín. Or was she Mo? No, Róisín was a woman's name, Mo was unisex. "Home is fifth, behind this place and Io. I think that's Io," Róisín said, pointing to a small light in the sky.

"Io and Europa aren't visible today," said Libby. "That's Amalthea."

"Oh, of course," said Róisín. "How embarrassing." She looked down at Libby and smiled. Oh, that was a lovely smile. She was a very handsome woman – they both were. Quite a bit older than Libby, and spoken for, but, hey, a girl could admire the view. "I'm Róisín. I must seem like such a gringo to you."

"Sorry?"

"Ah, my friends are using translation software," said the Doctor. "I'm afraid they don't speak fluent Standard. Unfortunately there's no literal translation for gringo in Standard. Róisín was saying that she seems like an ignorant tourist."

"Oh, don't worry, it can be hard at first. Although I am surprised you didn't mention Voga. I know the Vogans still call it a planet, but it's a moon now, no two ways about it. It has three times the mass of Ganymede."

"I have so many questions," said Róisín, "but I think the Daleks are more important."

"Well, they just showed up one day. It wasn't immediate, but they started appearing on TV and then you'd see them online or casually on the streets. Sometimes some of them get together and chant about extermination or about how they don't want to be replaced by Zygons, but mostly they just deny that they are Daleks while saying speciesist rubbish. People started treating them like their ideas deserved respect if they were phrased in a certain way."

"And you're the only one who can tell?" asked Sally.

"Well… no. I have contacts. But you look at most people and they just don't seem to care, or they even repeat some of the Dalek talking points."

"What are their talking points, exactly?" said the Doctor.

Libby looked around. There were no Daleks in the park, but there were Callistans, who were starting to eye them up. "We shouldn't talk here."

Chapter 2

Libby took them to a café on the edge of town. It was covered by the shadow of the giant ice spikes which marked the city's edge, well off the beaten track and away from the eyes of tourists. The décor was austere, and the café was dark and quiet, with no other customers.

"Hello Libby," said the proprietor, Eliya, an elderly Silurian. "You've brought some friends."

"They're from Luna," Libby said. "They know about the Daleks."

"Well then, welcome to the resistance," said Eliya. She lifted the flip-up section of the countertop and waved them through. Libby pushed herself in, and the others followed behind her. The back room was small, but Libby pushed on one of the bricks and the wall slid away to reveal a cavern behind it, carved into one of the ice spikes. A couple of Libby's friends sat at a table in the centre of the room. There was Eliya's husband, a Sea Devil named Henry, and Liu, a Martian human. They greeted Libby and the party.

"If these spikes are made of ice," said Mo, "then why aren't they melting?"

"The surface ice is melting," said the Doctor. "Or rather, has melted. The spikes used to be much bigger, before Callisto was terraformed. Now the only ice that remains in them is insulated by an outer layer of rock."

"You know a lot about Callisto," said Libby.

"I know a lot about most things," said the Doctor.

"Friends, it's good to have you here," said Henry.

"Is this the whole resistance?" said Clyde.

"Don't be daft," said Liu. "There's about two dozen of us here in Babylon. More in Corinth and Sparta. Then we've got branches all over Callisto, plus a big one on New Heraklion, one on Voga, and another on Salmydessus."

"Sorry, not following," said Sally.

"Excuse my friends," said the Doctor. "They don't speak Standard and their translator isn't good at place names. New Heraklion is the biggest city on Ganymede, and Salmydessus is the port on Europa. Voga is a planet of gold that started orbiting Jupiter after it was attacked by the Cybermen," he translated for his friends.

"Right. And technically we have branches on Titan and Mars and Ceres, but they're not as motivated."

"And the Daleks are everywhere?" asked Sally.

"No," Liu said, impatient. "They're just on Callisto."

"Now, Liu, go easy on the new recruits," said Henry.

"Sorry, it's just… what use are they going to be if they don't know anything about the Daleks?"

"Oi, I know a thing or two about the Daleks, thank you," said Nardole.

"So do I," said Sally. "They invaded Earth and made planets appear in the sky."

"What?" said Róisín.

"Oh dear," said the Doctor.

"That was 600 years ago!" said Libby.

"Oh dear," said the Doctor again.

"OK, what are you lot playing at?" said Liu. "Are you… are you Dalek spies or something?"

The party all looked at the Doctor. "Fine, I'll explain. I am not from this solar system. I come from the planet Gallifrey, on a distant arm of the Milky Way. I am a Time Lord. I travel freely through time and space – "

"Hold on just a second – "

"… in a ship powered by an instance of a black hole. I met Sally in 2008, and then took her from 2021 to, I don't know, 2060 something. Then she moved to the Moon with these three. I met Nardole and rebuilt him after he was decapitated. I came back and picked up this lot from the Moon. I brought them here so Clyde could find a new model to duplicate. Oh, and most importantly, I have fought the Daleks dozens of times and defeated at least nine of their invasions of this system in your past and future. I look forward to making it a round ten."

The room was stunned into silence.

"I think that sums it up nicely," said Nardole.

"What did you say your name was?" said Henry.

"I'm the Doctor."

"Yeah, that figures," said Henry. "I've read all about you. We'd better call an emergency meeting. The resistance is very glad to have you."

Chapter 3

The cavern was raucous. Everyone who Libby had ever seen organise against the Daleks was there. The local members of the Solidarity Party had all shown up, even Helen Grant. And it wasn't just people from Babylon – there were activists from Corinth and Sparta too, and even a few Antheians who had managed to catch the bullet train over in time. There were Humans and Silurians and Sea Devils and Zygons and hulking Martian Ice Warriors, who between them made up the great bulk of the crowd. The remainder were a conglomeration of the system's minor sapient species: silver Mercurials who moved slowly in the relative cold of Callisto; aquatic Europans who wore mechanised pressure suits over their stick-insect bodies so they could walk on the land; Mondasian Reptiles, who called themselves Regal Lizards, whether they were terrestrial or aquatic or airborne; a gaggle of sedantry grey-skinned Vogans wearing ornate robes, whose planet of gold was now orbiting slightly further from Jupiter than Callisto; a single prickly Siccati, Prab=Dism, a permanently stoned bohemian who had joined the resistance early but focused on making anti-Dalek art. Some excitable young lemuroid Cytherians from Venus leapt about the room, screeching as they bounced off the taller members of the audience. A couple of Waro hissed at them: they were bad-tempered bat-eared little creatures from Neptune's largest moon, Triton. There were insectoid Lunaries with wings like those of dragonflies, and Terrae, who human scientists had found hibernating within the Moon's shell when they dug homes into the craters. There were even a couple of members of the Forest of Cheem, who had evolved from off-Earth propagations of the Ramón tree, and Tuskens, who had evolved from Earth pigs. A Mercurian, a monstrous-looking lava creature with a heart of gold, was appearing only via video link, the silver Mercurials holding a tablet displaying its face.

In short, it was a melting pot of different species. But the crowd was diverse in more than one way. They were old and young, male and female, cyborgs and fully organic. There were badge-wearing members of the Solidarity Party, but also people from other Callistan parties, even a few from the centre-right. All that united them was one simple thing: they knew what the Daleks were, and they were prepared to stop them.

Babylon was one of the largest cities on Callisto, and the least homogenous in the system. But even so, the sheer weight and diversity of the people packed into this room wasn't something Libby had experienced before. You could easily go a couple of months without seeing a Waro or a Lunary or even a Europan, and while Libby knew there were other Siccati in Babylon, Prab=Dism was the only one she'd ever actually spoken to. And Libby couldn't tell exactly how many people had crammed into the cavern, but it was significantly more than they'd had at the AGM.

Eliya climbed up on a table and cleared her throat. It had no effect on the crowd. She asked for quiet, but her voice was drowned out by the din. Then Henry tilted his head back and led out a deep honk that drilled right down into Libby's eardrums. The room fell silent.

"Thank you, Henry," said Eliya. "We're gathered here today because we have an extremely special guest." There was a cheer, which was cut short when Henry moved his head back as if he were about to honk again. "You all know the tales of the heroes who fought off the last two Dalek invasions of Earth. Ian Chesterton. Barbara Wright. Lucie Miller. Alex Campbell. Alex's mother, Susan Foreman, fought in both campaigns. And Susan's grandfather, known to her and everyone else as the Doctor, also fought in both campaigns – and has fought the Daleks many other times besides. Most of you have read Susan's journals. The Doctor travels in time and has the ability to change face. There are those who believe the Doctor to be a myth, or a nom-de-plume, a Robin Hood for the space age, a time travelling Karen Eliot, the final form of Luther Blissett. But we know that isn't what the Daleks think. We hear the Daleks talk about the Doctor in hushed tones on their private communications channels. The Daleks fear the Doctor, and they have reason to. The Doctor has stopped the Daleks more times than anyone else in the universe, even Absalom Daak. Everyone, I am pleased to introduce, the breath within the myth, the Doctor."

There was a cacophony as the room burst into joyous hollering. The Doctor sprung up onto the table next to Eliya and waved. He seemed to rather be revelling in the attention.

"Thank you, thank you," he said, as the cheering died down. "I suppose many of you are sceptical, so, let's have a whistle-stop tour. I negotiated peace between humanity and the Earth Reptiles, though admittedly it took a few attempts." There was a baying from the Earth reptiles. They recognised the story. "I also made it possible for Zygons to negotiate permanent refuge within this system in 2013." The Zygons bayed now. "I helped the Ice Warriors become part of the Interstellar Community. You call me Belot'ssar, the Cold Blue Star." A hiss from the Ice Warrors, which Libby recognised as a war chant. "The Daleks call me by many names: Ka Faraq Gatri, the Destroyer of Worlds. Karshtakavaar, the Oncoming Storm. They call me the Predator of the Daleks, the Deathbringer, the One Without Mercy, the Great Scourge, Whispering Damnation, the Living Death, the Evil Renegade, the Ultimate Executioner, the Destroyer of Skaro, and you know why? Because wherever they are and whatever they do, I am the one who stops the Daleks."

The room roared, and Libby found herself roaring with it.

"The Daleks say that they know no emotion. That is a lie. They know hatred. They know anger. They know pain. And above all else, they know fear. They fear for their lives, they fear for their species, and you know what they fear the most? You know what the greatest weakness of the Daleks is? The one thing that defeats them again and again and again? They. Fear. Me."

They cheered again.

"I survived two Dalek invasions of Earth. I tricked the Daleks into destroying their own home world. I survived the Second War In Heaven, against an enemy that made the Daleks turn and run. I not only survived the Last Great Time War, but I won it – not once, not twice, not thrice, but four separate times. I've survived Dalek death camps and torn those camps to the ground. I survived the Dalek Asylum and destroyed it from the inside. I've corrupted Daleks and made them turn on their own kind and fight for the cause of goodness and freedom. I will teach you all how to take on the Daleks, and together we will drive them out of Babylon, drive them off Callisto, and wipe them –"

"SORRY I AM SO LAAAAAATE. WHAT HAVE I MISSED?"

Chapter 4

"Oh, hey, Zaan," said one of the humans near the back, in the midst of a deadly silence. "We're just organising…"

"Shut up, Tulu, you idiot. That's a Dalek."

"I AM NOT A DAAAAA-LEK!" said Dalek Zaan.

"Why would a Dalek be attending a meeting of the anti-Dalek resistance?" asked Tulu.

There was a muttering, and then most of the crowd turned back to the Doctor, stood up on the table in his red velvet jacket. "Tell me, Zaan," said the Doctor, "what do you think about Zygons?"

"I AM NOT SPECIESIST. HOW-E-VER, WE MUST CON-SI-DER A FEW POINTS. FIRST, OBJECTIVE DAAAAAA-LEK SCIENTISTS HAVE CONDUCTED EX-PE-RI-MENTS WHICH SHOW ZYGONS TO BE INFERIOR TO DALEKS AT PLUNGER MAN-IP-U-LA-TION, EX-TER-MIN-A-TION, AND LEV-IT-A-TION. IT IS ALSO NOTABLE THAT NOBODY IS ALLOWED TO CRITICISE ZYGONISM. DID YOU KNOW THAT MANY OF OUR MEDIA MOGULS ARE ZYGONISTS? THEY SILENCE ANYONE WHO CRITICISES THE RADICAL ZYGONIST AGENDA."

Libby was worried now. She didn't know everyone in the room, but she thought that everyone she knew at least was committed to the anti-Dalek cause. But now, the room was clearly divided. There was a mixture of people who seemed to be genuinely considering what Dalek Zaan was saying or even nodding along, a few who seemed to be trying to read the room, and a frighteningly small number who were prepared to stand up to the Dalek in their midst. Fortunately, the Doctor and his friends seemed to be the committed ones.

"You're seriously telling us that you think 'Dalek science' is objective while also denying that you are a Dalek?" said Mo. He seemed even more fired up than Clyde.

"DAAAAALEK FAAAAACTS DO NOT CARE ABOUT HUMAN FEEEEEELINGS."

"Seriously, fuck off, you little ball of hate. You've got no reason to hate Zygons."

"I DO NOT HATE ZYGONS. I AM MERELY OPPOSED TO THE IDEOLOGY OF ZYGONISM."

"And what's that, then?"

"ZYGONISM IS THE IDEOLOGY THAT SAYS ZYGONS CAN BE TRUSTED TO INTEGRATE INTO OUR SOCIETY, EVEN AT THE EXPENSE OF LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS. ZYGONS HAVE A LOT OF POWER IN THIS SOLAR SYSTEM, FAR MORE THAN THE HUMANS AND SILURIANS WHO WORK FOR THEM, BUT THEY HAVE REPEATEDLY BEEN CHASED OUT OF OTHER SYSTEMS. WE SHOULD ACKNOWLEDGE THE DIFFICULTIES OF LIVING WITH SHAPE-SHIFTERS. HOW DO WE KNOW OUR GENETIC RELATIVES HAVE NOT BEEN REPLACED BY ZYGONS?"

"Some of you seem a little unsure, so let me make this clear," said the Doctor. "Zaan is a Dalek. He might not be calling for all non-Dalek life to be exterminated, but he is selling you the same sort of hate packaged in a way that will make it appeal to you. His opposition to 'Zygonism' is nothing more than Zygon-hate by another name."

"But Zaan can't be a Dalek!" said Tulu. "He signs all our petitions, he marched for a higher minimum wage…"

"You can do those things and still be a Dalek!"

"But it's pretty disgraceful to suggest that someone like Zaan is as bad as the people who want to exterminate most people."

"You're naïve. Zaan isn't representative of you, he's representative of Daleks. We should drive him out of this space."

"DRIVE ME OUT? BASED ONLY ON MY BELIEFS? THIS IS CANCELLATION CULTURE AT ITS WORST. I THOUGHT THE RESISTANCE POSSESSED THE EMOTION KNOWN AS 'TOL-ER-ANCE'? I HAVE BEEN NOTHING BUT CIVIL WITH YOU, AND YET-"

One of the Ice Warriors next to Zaan struck him with a thick right hook. Zaan reeled backwards and swung his gun around to face the Ice Warrior. This is it, thought Libby. The Dalek was going to run through them like an Ice Warrior through ice. She'd seen the videos – a single Dalek could kill a dozen people in a second. Zaan shot the Ice Warrior, who threw his arms back in pain and collapsed backwards. Still breathing. Then one of the Zygons transformed into a triceratops and crashed right into Zaan. The Dalek was pushed backwards into a wall under the weight of the Zygon. His eyestalk came loose and flew backwards, his casing shattered, and the mutant – Zaan himself – was splattered into the floor as the Zygon stepped onto him.

Chapter 5

"That wasn't ideal," said the Doctor, "but it could have been so much worse."

Faye, the Zygon who had killed Zaal, was making use of Eliya and Henry's shower, thoroughly rinsing away every cell of the Dalek. Most of the resistance viewed them as a hero, but the Doctor had managed to convince everyone not to embrace Faye until they were completely clean.

The Ice Warrior who had been shot was Commander Qeed. Zaal hadn't managed to kill him, but Qeed was badly hurt and needed to be taken for medical treatment, with the paramedics suspecting organ failure. Within the resistance, there was a mixture of relief and worry: relief that Qeed had survived, and worry that he might still be incapacitated or die. Qeed was not only a popular member of the resistance, but one of its leaders. He had even been placed near the top of the Solidarity Party list for the upcoming election.

"They both survived," the Doctor said. He was speaking quietly to his immediate circle of friends – a circle which Libby was pleasantly surprised to find that she seemed to be included in. There was still a reasonable size crowd in the ice pick, who were chatting away while they waited for Faye to return. Some people had gone home, feeling either overwhelmed or unsafe. "A blast from a Dalek weapon should be fatal to an Ice Warrior, and touching the casing should cause spontaneous combustion in organic lifeforms. Zaal must not be at full strength."

"That explains why the Daleks haven't just killed everyone already," said Nardole.

"Perhaps, but that doesn't feel satisfying to me. They're the Daleks, they must have some way of causing death and destruction."

"People are going to be angry," said Clyde. "Tulu was irate. Seemed to think Zaal was just speaking the truth."

"Zaal was obviously trying to infiltrate the resistance. I'm surprised how many people fell for his machinations, but Daleks are canny. These ones obviously know how to make their ideas appealing."

"Don't worry about Tulu, Clyde," said Mo, patting his partner on the shoulder. "He's an idiot. Nobody could believe that crap about Zygons replacing people."

"Didn't you see how people reacted to Zaag?" said Clyde. "There were a lot of people in there who agreed with Tulu on some level."

"I'm afraid Clyde is right," said the Doctor. "Unfortunately anti-Zygon prejudice is pretty pervasive throughout the system, even in progressive spaces like this one. About one in three Callistans has a negative view of Zygons, and the Daleks are only a tiny part of that."

"Did we definitely do the right thing?" said Libby. The others looked at her, and Libby felt her face begin to flourish. "Sorry, it's just… maybe it's naïve, but should we be killing Daleks just for being Daleks?"

"Oh, I like this one. You're asking exactly the right questions, Libby. Good moral compass, too. You're right, I'd rather avoid violent methods. Unfortunately, when it comes to Daleks, violence is usually the only viable form of self-defence. Zaal shot Qeed, after all. I don't think there was an alternative."

"So if another Dalek wheels its way in here, we shouldn't kill it?"

"I really do admire your optimism, Libby. You can't think of Daleks like other people. If the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler walked in here, you might reasonably stand a chance of either changing his mind or otherwise restraining him. You could remove his power and make it harder for him to win people to his cause. You would have a lot of options other than killing him. But with a Dalek, there's zero recourse to alternatives. They only have the ability to do good if they are corrupted, one way or another. They do not have the capacity for the kinds of growth that people are capable of. And they have multiple ways of killing someone which cannot easily be stopped. I'm prepared to risk negotiating with Daleks, but I wouldn't advise anyone else to. Unless you have good reason to think that a particular Dalek can be reasoned with, I would advise trying to destroy it."

"What you're saying makes practical sense, Doctor," said Sally. "I'm not entirely sold on the ethics. Is it right to kill a Dalek pre-emptively? Is it right to judge them all based on their species?"

"In the very narrow sense of a Dalek? Yes. We care about individual lives because individuals value their ongoing existence, and because individuals can always be redeemed. Daleks are not like humans or Zygons or any of the species here today. A Dalek has no sense of self. A Dalek has no desire to survive on an individual level. And a Dalek has a tiny speck of the emotional range that a person has – and only the bad bits: anger, hatred, fear."

"I feel anger, hatred, and fear right now," said Clyde.

"And so you should do. The Daleks threaten your existence and those of billions of innocent people. Anger, fear, and hatred are all appropriate responses to that. But there's so much more to you than just anger and hatred, Clyde. You are a complex, compassionate, loving person."

"You're loyal," said Sally.

"You're brilliant," said Róisín.

"You're the love of my life," said Mo.

"You are all of that and much more besides, Clyde. Even your anger and your fear and your hate serve specific, justified purposes, most of the time. The Daleks do not have positive qualities. They do not have complexity. Their only purpose is to destroy. Fighting them is not only morally justified, but morally compelled. If we don't, then at some point they will destroy everything there is to love in the universe. They don't care about individuals. If you do, then the Daleks are your enemy."

Libby was suddenly aware that, once again, the Doctor had become the centre of attention. As more and more of the resistance had gathered around him, he had projected his voice more and more, becoming fierier in his rhetoric and more animated in his body language. He had an electric presence. There was no shortage of people in Babylon who were prepared to say that they hated Daleks, but there weren't many who were as compelling as the Doctor.

"So what do we do, Doc?" said Henry. "We could overwhelm the Daleks in a fight, but it would be asking a lot of the Zygons and Ice Warriors in particular."

"And maybe a fight is what we need. But right now I can't plan on how to stop them because I don't actually know what they're doing. They used to be much more direct."

"Pardon me," said someone who Libby recognised as Helen Grant, who had been debating with Dalek Kraag on the TV that morning. She was short, black, and middle-aged, with a few liver spots on the unconverted side of her face, "but I think I know what the Daleks want."

"Sorry, I don't believe we've been introduced," said the Doctor.

"I'm Helen Grant, Solidarity Party representative for Babylon. Don't worry, I know who you are. What the Daleks want, in the short term, is power. They're standing a slate of candidates in the election, and it looks like they're going to get enough representation to coalition with the Heritage Party."

"Daleks playing electoral politics. Now I've seen it all. It doesn't really tell us why they want power, what their end goal is, but I suppose that doesn't matter. You've been a big help, Helen. I'll do whatever I can to help you defeat the Daleks."

"Well, Doctor," said Helen, a glint appearing in her eye. "It looks like Qeed isn't going to be able to campaign after the Dalek shot him. There's still time for us to add a replacement to our party list."

"Oh no, I know I said I'd do whatever I could…"

"Doctor, we need to defeat the Daleks."

"Look, I'm not a cynic, I know most politicians have good intentions, I know politics can make a difference, but please…"

"Doctor, I'd like you to stand for election."

Chapter 6

After a lot of protests, the Doctor had agreed to stand for the Solidarity Party – and, in particular, the represent the party at upcoming debates. If anything, Helen Grant was more pleased that the Doctor's friends were going to campaign for him. Her one new candidate also netted her six new volunteers. They'd been paired up based on how much they knew about the Daleks: Nardole and Clyde, Sally and Róisín, Libby and Mo. Then off they went, canvassing in pairs.

Libby found herself unable to relax around Mo. She didn't think of herself as a shrinking violet, but Mo was altogether more strident and confrontational. Libby was often guilty of putting passion before pragmatism, but Mo was like a bull in a china shop, where the china was other people's minds. They were supposed to be gathering data to support their "Get Out The Vote" operation on election day. Find out who people wanted to vote for, if they sounded undecided then give them a quick pitch, and move on. That message didn't seem to have got through to Mo. He took to arguing furiously with everyone who answered their door. Libby could understand the desire to argue with people who weren't prepared to vote against the Daleks, even if it rarely led to anything productive. Mo, though, did not restrict his arguing merely to supporters of the Daleks. He even chewed out a little old lady who had a Solidarity Party poster in her front window, but wasn't prepared to campaign or join the resistance.

"You've got to ease up," said Libby. She wondered what Brian would think if he heard those words coming out of her mouth. She hadn't told him about her campaigning activities. "We want people to think we're the good guys, remember?"

"We are the good guys. If they can't see that then that's their problem."

"No," said Libby. "It's our problem. We're the ones who want them to vote for us. Anyway, Ms O'Neill said she was going to vote for us and you still had a go at her."

"It's so frustrating!" said Mo. "I only just got here and it seems like I care more about stopping the Daleks than anyone who actually lives here."

"Well, for starters, there's me," said Libby. "I'm out here doing just as much as you."

Mo looked her up and down. Libby realised it was the first time he'd properly looked at her all day. Between houses he bounced off ahead of her, faster than her wheels could carry her, muttering to himself. "You're right," he said. "I'm sorry. Why can't everyone be a bit more like you?"

"Well, I don't have any responsibilities. No children, no family, no mortgage. I'm self-employed, and I don't make much money, so I don't lose out on much when I take a day off. And I'm not going to say that being in the chair is relaxing, but I don't get tired in quite the same way as people who walk everywhere."

"You're a tough cookie," said Mo.

"I'm not tough. I can knock on doors, and I need to, so I am doing it. It's just door knocking. It's not for everyone but it's not a superpower and I don't need to be patronised for doing it just because I'm disabled."

"OK, OK," said Mo. "But seriously, thanks for helping. Thanks for caring."

They came to the next house. Mo rang the doorbell. A Silurian man answered.

"Hi," said Libby. "We're from the Solidarity Party. There's an election in two weeks – will you be voting?"

"Yes, but not for you I'm afraid," said the Silurian. "I'm voting Security, Heritage, Justice, no further preference."

"Security and Heritage?" said Mo. "Sorry, won't be bothering you again. Dalek sympathiser."

It was all Libby could do to stop herself from facepalming right there and then. The Silurian man was visibly outraged – he turned himself into an Ice Warrior. He wasn't a Silurian at all, but merely a Zygon in Silurian form. Well, now he was a Zygon in Ice Warrior form, towering menacingly over Mo.

"Dalek sympathiser? You cretin, I'm a Zygon. I'm not going to vote for the Daleks. But I also want a police force that can keep our streets safe and a military that can keep our planet safe. Are the Solidarity Party going to give me that?"

Mo looked at Libby, helpless. Libby knew the answers to the man's questions, and the rebuttals she could give, but it wasn't worth it – not when Mo had just insulted him like that. It wasn't even that Mo was factually incorrect, but saying it in such stark terms didn't achieve anything beneficial. "Please forgive me friend, sir, he's new to Callisto and doesn't understand the nuances of our political scene."

"Too right he doesn't, otherwise he wouldn't be campaigning for a bunch of extremists."

"Come on, Mo," said Libby quietly, grabbing at his sleeve. She was worried the two men were going to come to blows. Fortunately, Mo had enough humility to back down.

"Good fun this, isn't it?" said Nardole, as he knocked on a door. "Getting to meet new people, see inside their homes, record lots of data…"

"It's not really my idea of fun," said Clyde. He was in the form of Henry the Sea Devil, not wanting to knock on doors in his natural Zygon form.

"Oh, give it a chance, it will be great."

The door opened. An Ice Warrior opened the door.

"Hello!" said Nardole, cheerily. "We're here from…"

The door shut in their face.

"See what I mean?" said Nardole. "Who would have imagined an Ice Warrior would have such a great taste in wallpaper patterns?"

"Yeah, I suppose," said Clyde flatly.

"Knew you'd get into it," said Nardole, and together they turned and walked to the next door. They were in a block of flats, so getting from one door to the next was just a short walk. Nardole tapped on a tablet. "Ice Warrior, probably male, probably not voting for us."

"How did you meet the Doctor?" asked Clyde.

"I'm not sure," said Nardole as he knocked on the next doorbell. "It depends what you mean by 'you'. And 'meet', for that matter."

"Sorry?"

"It's complicated. Hello! We're here from the Solidarity Party."

"I already voted," said the Tusken who had answered the door.

"Excellent! Does anyone else live here who might not have voted yet?"

"My kids are in…"

"Would they happen to be over the age of 15?"

"No, they're five and three."

"Right, well, encourage them to vote in line with their personal values and beliefs," said Nardole. Children were allowed to vote from birth, if they could do so unassisted, but there were strict laws prohibiting canvassers and campaigners from speaking to juveniles. Each species was treated slightly differently depending on how they matured. Tuskens were classed as mature from the age of 16. "Sorry to have disturbed you."

"No trouble," said the Tusken, shutting the door.

"You can tell me, you know," said Clyde.

"Eh? Tell you what?" said Nardole, looking up from the tablet.

"About how you met the Doctor. I'm a 21st century Zygon who helped humanity colonise their moon, I can handle complicated."

"That's not complicated," said Nardole. "That's Tuesday."

"Oh," said Clyde, crestfallen.

"How did you meet the Doctor?" asked Nardole, as he recorded the Tusken's demographic data.

"I guess it was boring," said Clyde. "I heard he could solve problems. I asked him to solve mine."

"Which was?"

"I was lonely. He set me up with Mo. Couldn't have been better. He spent months checking in on us to make sure everything was going well. I told him I owed him a really big favour, and he asked me to keep an eye on Sally Sparrow for him. I thought it was a bit creepy, but we turned out to be good friends."

"You know what he was doing there, don't you?" said Nardole.

"Yeah, I worked it out after a little while. He wasn't just trying to keep Sally safe. He was giving me a way to repay him, and he was giving me two extra friends."

"Such good friends that you followed them to the Moon. He is good, isn't he?"

"Yeah, he's going to make a great… senator, or whatever."

"No he won't," said Nardole. "He hates formal responsibility. Titles and positions, that sort of thing. He's more into the informal kind. Showing up and getting things done, that's the Doctor's style. He'll probably disappear as soon as he gets elected, if not earlier."

"So why's he running?"

"Search me. He never tells me his plans."

It wasn't that Sally didn't think canvassing was important. It was that she thought getting a gun was more important.

She had found a gun shop without too much trouble. She didn't understand guns, but the owner clearly did, talking about calibre and stopping power and muzzle flash and all these other terms that flew over Sally's head.

"I don't care about the specifications," she said. "I just want something that can kill Daleks."

The owner inhaled through his teeth. Sure, he had weapons that would kill a Dalek. But if you came in talking about wanting to kill sapient beings, you couldn't buy a gun. Yes, even if that sapient being was a killing machine powered by hatred and bigotry.

Were there any other gun shops nearby? The owner laughed. There was one about half an hour away across town. But even if Sally went in there without mentioning why she wanted a gun, she'd need to pass a background check. Stable address, stable finances, good health, no previous arrests. In other words, it wasn't a check that Sally would pass.

So, it was the black market.

"Please, Sal," said Róisín. "This is crazy. We don't need a gun."

"No, trust me, we need guns," said Sally.

"Guns? Plural?"

"Yes, each. We've got to be prepared, because the Daleks will be."

"Sally, you've never fired a gun in your life."

"No, I haven't. But I wish I had when the Daleks came to Earth."

"In this invasion that there's no record of."

"The Doctor remembers it. The Daleks killed millions. They nearly destroyed the world. They made people march to their deaths. I'm not going to let that happen to us."

"That sounds… heavy."

"Yeah, you could call it that. But the Doctor says that when you travel in time, you have to stop thinking that other people will remember the same history that you do."

Róisín put her hand on her wife's shoulder. "Is this about Laoise?"

"Everything I have done for the last twenty years has been about Laoise."

"You know what I mean. Her being stuck on Earth, back in the 21st century, without her moms."

"But that's just it, Ró, she isn't stuck there. By the time she's our age, humanity will be functionally immortal, barring accidents. I'd say the Daleks count as a pretty big accident. They killed billions of Earthlings, Henry said. Then they came back and did it again. Laoise has always been obsessed with Earth." Sally stopped herself before she choked up. Róisín gave her a cuddle.

"We could try to find her," Róisín said.

"No, no way," said Sally. "That… that locks in this future, or something. I don't understand it, but…"

"I get it. It would create a paradox, stop us from being able to save Laoise if anything has happened to here. I mean, I don't know if the real world actually follows such a simplistic cause-and-effect path, but people always freak out about them anyway."

"You sound like the Doctor," said Sally with a weak smile.

"I am a doctor. The indefinite article." Róisín stared Sally in the eye. "Sally, the Doctor says he has beaten the Daleks before. We need to trust him. He'll beat them again, and he'll save Laoise and her descendants. But we need to uphold our end, which is the campaigning."

"I'd feel happier if I shot some Daleks."

"Maybe you'll get your chance. But you won't get a chance if you get arrested for carrying an illegal weapon with intent to murder."

"Fine, no guns," said Sally. "But I'm not going to feel safe knocking on doors without at least some protection."

"Well then," said Róisín with a smile. "It's a good job you married a Canadian."

Chapter 7

Nardole and Clyde were the last to make it back to the Solidarity Party HQ at the end of the day's canvassing. Clyde collapsed into a chair. This wasn't the secret ice pillar behind the café, but instead was a public building on a main street – the face of a political party rather than the base of a protest movement. At the front of the room, the Doctor and Helen Grant were preparing for a debate. Libby was watching, enraptured by Helen's impressions of other political leaders.

"Look, I believe in the free market," Helen said, channelling the Heritage Party. "But Callistans built Callisto. Shouldn't Callistans be prioritised in the job market?"

"The people who terraformed Callisto were handsomely rewarded for their work," said the Doctor. "In the here and now, an open Callisto is a thriving Callisto. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than natives, they pay more in tax, they create jobs, start businesses, and make Callisto a better place to live."

"The Solidarity Party wants to open Callisto up to a flood of Earthlings and Martians. These people have done nothing for Callisto, but they will take your job, drive up the cost of living, and drain our public services."

"You're contradicting yourself," said the Doctor. "Immigrants will inject demand into the economy. That creates jobs and funds our public services. Of course we need to be able to screen out people with violent tendencies or extremist beliefs, as well as invasive species and pathogens. We just want to let everyone live and work on Callisto unless we have a good reason not to."

"Good day?" Sally asked Clyde and Nardole. Clyde shrugged, but Nardole gave a cheery response.

"It was very good. We knocked on 412 doors. Can't remember the last time I knocked on that many doors in one day. I should do it more often."

"Ah, Nardole, just the person I wanted to see," said the Doctor, stepping out from behind his lectern. "Do you have the data from your canvassing?"

"Do I look like someone who would forget to take canvassing data?" said Nardole. "I've already uploaded it."

"Excellent," said the Doctor, picking up a tablet of his own. "Let's see… I can use the sample we've collected to model the likely voting patterns of all of Callisto on Election Day. Controlling for all relevant demographic details… hmm."

"You're producing a complex multilevel regression with poststratification election model in your head?" said Helen.

"Oh, it's easy once you know how. All Gallifreyans learn Bayesian statistics at a young age. Of course, we don't call it Bayesian statistics, but it's the same principle. I taught Nate Silver how to… you know, that's a story for another time. The point is, it's looking touch and go. We have strong support from highly educated voters and Zygons, but at the moment it looks like a Heritage-Dalek coalition is the most viable outcome, perhaps with Security support." The Doctor looked up. "It just doesn't make sense. Why are so many people prepared to support the Daleks? I'm projecting 52% of humans giving Daleks a better score than us, for goodness' sake!"

"It doesn't help that the media aren't prepared to hold the Daleks to account," said Helen. "There's an obsession with false balance."

"Is balance a bad thing?" asked Nardole.

"Not inherently. If a topic is complex and valid arguments can be made from multiple sides, then responsible journalism shouldn't shy away from the complexity. But when it comes at the expense of truth, or justice, then yes, balance is a bad thing."

"And equally, something balance is used in lieu of addressing the complexity of an argument," said the Doctor. "Something seems impartial if it just looks at two contrasting views, but that immediately excludes all other viewpoints. There aren't two sides to every story – there's usually much more than that."

"You know," said Helen, "I'm glad you're doing the debate. I mean, I'd relish it, but you're something else. You have a better grip on the issues facing Callistans than most of our candidates, and you have only just got here."

"Thanks. What I'd like to know is why the media suddenly started viewing Daleks as legitimate political actors?"

"Well, the Daleks started producing grassroots content on social media which got a lot of attention and basically forced the media to cover them. There was a video that went viral on the Ganymede Systems Network…"

"The Ganymede Systems Network?" said the Doctor. He started tapping away on the tablet.

"Yeah, they're a media company based out of Ganymede. Huge conglomerate, they have their own social network and the dominant TV and radio stations around Jupiter."

The Doctor stopped tapping at his tablet and stared at the screen. He paused for a few long seconds. "Sally, have a look at this."

Sally took the tablet off him. "Ganymede Systems Network, subsidiary of Ganymede Systems Incorporated, subsidiary of… Kerblam! Limited."

"I think," said the Doctor, "we should have a word with the bosses at Ganymede Systems."

Chapter 8

The Doctor took Sally, Nardole, and Clyde in the TARDIS to Ganymede. The others weren't happy at being left behind, but the Doctor said he was only taking people who would help him get into Kerblam! HQ. A large party would just make them more conspicuous. Clyde was still in the form of Henry the Sea Devil.

Ganymede was very different to Callisto. Instead of a solid moon with plenty of landmass, Ganymede's surface was completely covered by a great deep ocean. New Heraklion was the only above-water settlement, floating on a giant buoyant platform that had been moored to the seabed by teams of Sea Devils, using six thick cables. There were more underwater settlements, the largest of which, New Atlantis, was almost as large as New Heraklion. These were inhabited almost solely by aquatic species – Sea Devils, primarily, but also Europans, Merpeople, and Carpanthans. There were even several species of Dolphin roaming the oceans who were able to communicate with the aquatic species – apparently humans had cracked the dolphin language in the early 22nd Century.

New Heraklion was much less "open" than Babylon. For starters, it wasn't exposed to the open air. There were thick walls of metal and glass which provided shielding against cosmic radiation deflected by Jupiter's magnetosphere. Ganymede had its own magnetosphere, the Doctor explained, but it was overwhelmed by Jupiter's. By contrast, Callisto was far enough out to not be bombarded with deflected radiation, and people could walk outside without fear. There were no parks or green spaces. There was no soil. The corridors of New Heraklion had spider plants growing hydroponically under ultraviolet lights, and the food was grown in aquaculture domes with open floors.

Gravity was noticeably higher than on Callisto, too – in fact, it was the strongest gravity Sally had experienced since the last time she went to Earth. It was still much weaker than Earth gravity, and they bounced along rather than walking, but the bounces were noticeably smaller than they had been back on the Moon.

New Heraklion itself was, it seemed, a very industrial place. The farms were the closest thing to nature. Sally wondered why anyone bothered to live on a moon that was so inhospitable to terrestrial life, not to mention cut off from Earth and Mars. It seemed like the city's economy was driven by the water. The station had tidal stream turbines underneath it and wind turbines above it, capturing the power of the circulating air and water. Most of the electricity seemed to go into electrolysis, splitting up the water into oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen was exported or used as fuel, particularly for refuelling spaceships. The sea water was also used to cool server farms and robotics. There didn't seem to be any culture or media spaces, no cinemas or theatres or even any shops beyond food shops, not even so much as advertising billboards, although there were a few anti-Dalek posters slapped haphazardly on the walls between the plant and the safety messages. There didn't seem to be any children, either. Nobody seemed to stay for longer than necessary. Come and make some money, then get out.

"Why does Kerblam! base its media operation on a planet with no media?" asked Sally.

"At a guess?" said the Doctor. "There is probably a favourable regulatory environment. If the news media isn't a significant industry here, then the chances are that broadcasters aren't restricted the way that they would be somewhere like Earth or Callisto. No need to worry about truth or fairness or any other legal inconveniences."

"Still," said Mo, "where do they get the journalists and writers and actors?"

"Most of the writing seems to be procedural generated," said Nardole. "AI puts it together, no need for human oversight. They might even be using that for their drama output, photorealistic CGI acting out storylines generated by machines learning from tens of thousands of award-winning stories. Running a supercomputer is very cheap on Ganymede. They'd just need a few executives and editors on Ganymede to make sure their content didn't go against their values."

"So the question," said the Doctor, "is where is the Kerblam! office? Where could it be that nobody would notice?"

They found a computer terminal at the end of one corridor. Nardole set himself up at it and pulled up a map of the city, detailing the leaseholders of all the major industrial centres.

"It's not on the maps," said Nardole. "So that leaves two possibilities. It could be run out of a residential property, or it could be run out of a small office that isn't worth marking on the maps."

"Are there any empty properties?" asked the Doctor.

"One second," said Nardole. "Hmm, no. Space is in high demand. All properties are technically still owned by the Heraklion Council, and if they detect someone running a server farm in their apartment then they shut it down. So it must be in a commercial unit. There are some miscellaneous small business units in the city centre – that's probably where we should look."

"Have you tried searching for their address?" said Sally. "Or is that too obvious?"

"Let's give it a go," said Nardole. Results popped up. "OK, I thought they would be more secretive than that. Ganymede Media System… yeah, like I said, they're registered to a small commercial unit in the city centre. We can get a train there."

Nardole led them to the train station. There was a light rail system that took them into the city centre. This was a airier place than the outer corridors, but not much. Sally was drawn to the hydroponic garden centres, which sold ornamental plants and food crops alike. Sally was amazed to see tomatoes growing with no soil. The water they were growing in wasn't entirely clear – it must have been some sort of nutrient solution.

Unfortunately, they weren't there to buy plants. They headed down a dark and narrow alleyway that was largely featureless – there were neither loader bins nor inviting shop fronts. Instead, there were unassuming metal doors with numbers and business names on them. They walked past several before they got to the door labelled Ganymede Media Systems – a Kerblam! company. The Doctor stepped towards the door.

"Oo, hold on, I want to knock," said Nardole. He knocked on the door and stepped back. The Doctor tried the handle. The door wasn't locked, but the Doctor didn't open it fully.

"Yes, well, you could open the door, but then you'd miss out on the fun of someone coming to open it for you," said Nardole.

"Clyde, with me. You two, hang back. No, I don't want any arguments," the Doctor said, as Sally opened her mouth to protest. "I need you for something later. I'll shout for you if we get to speak to the big guy."

The Doctor opened the door and Clyde followed him in. The room was Spartan, with unadorned metal walls and no windows. A secretary sat behind a desk in front of the only other door. She was a stern blonde woman who Clyde estimated to be biologically in her late 30s or early 40s, but if rejuvenation treatments had kept marching forward then he supposed she could be ten times that age. A vase of flowers sat on the desk.

"I am afraid you are lost," said the receptionist. She had a tinny voice that reminded Clyde of an elderly teacher he'd had who had been a heavy tobacco smoker. "The Atlantic embassy is on the next street."

They turned to leave. When the Doctor put his hand to the doorknob, he stopped.

"Oh, you nearly had me then. I'm afraid that we're not looking for the Atlantic embassy. We're looking for the executives of Ganymede Media Systems, or failing that, the executives of Kerblam! Please put me through."

"Sir, you are looking for the Atlantic embassy."

"Doctor, come on, this is the wrong place."

"Clyde, please throw those flowers outside."

"Please do not throw those flowers away, they possess sentimental value for me."

"You sacrificed the right to sentiment when you tried to drug and brainwash your visitors," said the Doctor. He strode back over to the desk and smashed the vase off the desk. Clyde flinched, but the receptionist did not. "My most treasured possession is a leopardskin rug that still has the head attached."

"What?" said Clyde, disgusted.

"Sir, you have damaged my property, please leave or I will summon the city watch."

"No, see, you won't do that, because you've got extremely illegal flowers that have been genetically modified to release suggestibility pheromones. Your employer also clearly isn't prepared to hire an actual person to work on reception, because an actual person would have reacted when I said I owned a leopardskin rug. That's called the Voigt-Kampff test. It's not perfect, but it shows whether someone has bothered programming empathy into an android. And if you were one of the humans who would have an atypical reaction to that information, then you'd have a brain in your head that I would be able to mentally link to, but you don't. Your mind is entirely digital, a mid-grade AI running off a chip somewhere in your abdomen. Your voice is very good, but it's clearly synthesised – I suspect there's a speaker system in your throat which gets the acoustics close enough for human ears."

And then, behind the other door, came a voice like death itself.

"Come in, Doctor, I would be glad to gaze upon you again after so long."

The front door opened and Nardole and Sally spilled in.

"I said I'd summon you! You know the drill, Nardole. You should have retreated to a place of safety and waited there."

"Sorry," said Nardole sheepishly. "I didn't think Sally would be comfortable with that."

"Don't try to pin your insecurities on me, young man," said Sally. "You were the one who kept your ear pressed to the door the whole time."

"That was a purely practical measure."

"Enough squabbling," said the Doctor. "We've got an old friend to meet."

"Who is it?" said Clyde.

"I've got a few guesses. None of them good. Let's find out."

Chapter 9

The receptionist now stared ahead blankly. When they stepped around the desk to the back door, Clyde realised that she – it – didn't actually exist below the waist. It was the minimum effort necessary to look like this was the sort of business that needed a receptionist to act as gatekeeper.

Nardole didn't protest when the Doctor opened the door. The back room was small and dark, lit only by the flashing LEDs from server towers. There was some sort of structure like a human-sized glass pepper pot in the middle of the room. Clyde knew that if he was a human, he'd be struggling to make it out properly, but Sea Devils seemed to be better equipped at seeing in low-light conditions. There was some sort of orange gas in the glass…

The Doctor reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a hand torch. He shot a beam of light at the pepper pot, and it refracted into rainbows that seemed more saturated than those Clyde had seen as a human. The pepper pot had the distinctive bubbles and ridges of a Dalek shell. The orange gas, though, looked nothing like a Dalek mutant.

"Ah, now, this is going to take some explaining, if you are who I think you are," said the Doctor.

"Is it really, Doctor?" The voice was so… imminent. Hearing it wasn't like hearing, it was more like the words arrived fully formed in Clyde's brain. It was making Clyde's head spin – the voice seemed simultaneously menacingly robotic and jovial, like… Paul Bettany being tickled. "It seems fairly straightforward to me."

"Doctor, is this… Augustus Kerblam?" asked Sally.

"Yes and no, Sally. I think there is some remnant of the man who used to be Augustus Kerblam in there, but the passage of time has scrambled him up with so many other personalities that it would be difficult to pick him out."

"You do me a disservice, Doctor! I have ascended to a superior form, but I still have a continuity of identity. Or identities. I have many contradictory pasts, but then I did when I was a human, too."

"Sorry, but I thought Gus Kerblam was a human, why is he a glass Dalek full of orange gas?" said Nardole.

"You have me at a disadvantage, young man," said… Kerblam. "I have no record of you on my servers."

"And I'd like to keep it that way," said Nardole. "I buy local."

"That's your loss," said Kerblam. "In answer to your question, I long ago made the decision to upload my consciousness to my company's servers. I thought it would allow me access to a new range of experiences, simulated safaris with dinosaurs and so forth. Unfortunately, despite many attempts, human technology kept failing me. Even without advanced medical intervention, a human brain will typically last for over seventy years, but we still haven't made a computer that can last longer than ten years. While I had funded enough research into biological life extension and rejuvenation that there was no great rush, life in meatspace was nonetheless beginning to bore me."

"And then a miracle fell into your lap," said the Doctor.

"I couldn't put it better myself. A Kerblam! space probe found small amounts of an unknown gas in the asteroid belt. I had it brought to a research base on Mars, and I wasn't disappointed. The gas resisted analysis at first. Eventually, though, we were able to determine that it was displaying signs of consciousness. Highly distributed consciousness, but consciousness all the same. I brought in linguists, and eventually we were able to discern meaning in its fluctuations. It turns out that this gas thought that it was a Dalek."

"The Dalek Time Controller."

"Oh, do go on, Doctor, I can tell that you're dying to spill the beans."

"The Dalek Time Controller was… look, the title is quite literal. It was a Dalek that sought to establish Dalek control of branching timelines. Eventually the Daleks decided that it had become too corrupted by the process and had it destroyed."

"The way the Controller tells it is rather more intriguing, but you have the gist of it."

"And this Dalek was… an intelligent gas?" said Sally.

"No, that's how the Daleks destroyed it. The gas is a creature even worse than the Daleks. It's called the Eminence, and in one possible future, it takes control of all life in the universe, forming a single gestalt entity. It turns those who inhale it into zombies, essentially, although it calls them Infinite Warriors."

"I can assure you that this gas has none of those designs."

"Yes, well, you would say that, wouldn't you?"

"No, Doctor, I wouldn't. If I was now part of the Eminence, I would have no need for subterfuge or misdirection. I would simply release the breath of forever and subsume you. The Dalek Time Controller destroyed the other personalities that made up the Eminence, and was expelled into our Solar System."

"Sounds like the Dalek Time Controller has been painting itself in a flattering light, because that isn't what happened."

"I had considered that possibility, but I decided that it didn't matter. The point was, I had access to an intelligence that had solved several of the problems I was grappling with. It was an uploaded intelligence, which was great, but it also had knowledge of time travel, which I had been trying to gain ever since you took away my Angels, and it knew about all sorts of Dalek science."

"What, different ways to kill Zygons?" said Clyde, disgusted.

"No, no. Well, yes, but that wasn't what I was interested in. Have you ever wondered how Daleks manage to keep going? You never see one stopping to charge its batteries."

"On Skaro they were powered by static electricity," said the Doctor. "Then they used satellite dishes to receive radiative charges. Neither particularly efficient solutions, really."

"The way Daleks manage to stay powered is through a form of multidimensional nuclear fusion. It's really very interesting. There would be no point in explaining the details… sorry, Doctor, I forgot who I was speaking to. I'm sure you could grasp the science. But in any case, while I understand the abstract principles, I could not put them into any communicable form."

"But you don't need to worry about communication now, do you? You've merged your consciousness with the Dalek Time Controller."

"Indeed. I'm afraid my rhetorical power has somewhat wasted away from lack of use, but that's a trifling matter to me."

"So, you got your distributed intelligence. Why bother with the Daleks?"

"The Dalek Time Controller's co-operation was dependent upon a certain commitment to Dalek ideals. It wasn't the deal I would have liked to have struck, admittedly, but the Time Controller had sufficient leverage for me to be coerced. Frankly it doesn't bother me anymore. I got what I wanted, and the daleks got my resources."

"But you can't produce real Daleks. It's the multidimensional nuclear fusion, isn't it? You haven't been able to get it to work. The Daleks you're sending out across the system have all the hatred of Daleks, but only a fraction of the power."

"A fraction is all they need, Doctor. they don't need to slaughter people en masse. with my resources, they are changing people's minds. humanity is becoming a tool of the daleks."

"I can see why the Dalek Emperor had you destroyed," said the Doctor. "You're trying to say that Dalek is an idea, rather than a species? I can see the benefits, but most Daleks are too obsessed with purity to consider such a thing."

"Oh, at some point we'll deal get around to exterminating the remaining lifeforms, but in the meantime, getting them to do our work for us… oh, it's a joy, Doctor, you have no idea."

There was a crashing sound behind them. The Doctor span around. Sally had torn the android receptionist off its chair and was holding it above her head. Ganymede gravity made it completely effortless for her.

"Sally, what are you doing?"

"The way I see it," said Sally. "Augustus Kerblam, or the Dalek Time Controller, or whatever this thing calls itself…"

"They're all equally true, but these days I go by Gus, most of the time."

"Shut up, you. I don't know if you ever knew the difference between right and wrong, but you've definitely lost it now. You're either a Dalek, or something so close to one that I can't tell the difference. You're putting the whole world in danger so you can carry on, even just in some minor philosophical way. So give me one good reason why I shouldn't just kill you now?"

"My dear, I can give you several. First and foremost, I don't think you actually can kill me. I'm sure there's some theoretical way of diffusing my particles over a sufficiently large distance that they cease to interact, but right now you can't manage it. Even if you obliterated this vessel, I regret to inform you that I routinely sync with other instances of myself spread across the Earth, Moon, Mars, Titan, and Titania. You would do nothing to harm my long-term goals. At most, you would free the breath of forever within, and I would subsume you and your friends into my consciousness. It's not something I want to do, but I'll happily dangle it over your head as a threat."

"Fine, you win," said Sally. And then she smashed the receptionist-android into the server stack to the immediate right of Gus's receptacle.

"What are you doing?"

"I don't know," Sally said, as she swung the android into the server on the other side of Gus, "but it feels good."

"Stand back," said Nardole, holding his palm facing outward in front of him. Sally got out of his way, and suddenly all the lights went off, plunging them into total darkness. The android's arms, which had been stiff, flopped down limply.

"Electro-magnetic pulse," said Nardole. "If I'm right – and I usually am – that's just shut Gus off from his own hive-mind."

"We need to move," said the Doctor. "If we didn't have Ganymede's attention before, we do now. Back to the TARDIS and back to Callisto." The others filed out, but the Doctor lingered for a second.

"You probably can't hear me," said the Doctor. "But on the off chance that you can, and that there is any small part of Molly O'Sullivan in there… thank you, Dark Eyes."

Chapter 10

Two days before the election debate, due to be televised all over Caliisto, the Solidarity Party received a threatening letter.

ATTENTION INFERIOR LIFEFORMS

WE ARE AWARE THAT YOU INTEND TO PARTICIPATE IN THE UPCOMING ELECTORAL DEBATE. IN OUR SOCIETY, SPEECH HAS CONSEQUENCES. IN THE EVENT THAT YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THE DEBATE OFFENDS OUR INTERESTS, WE WILL RESPOND WITH EXTERMINATION.

"This is a crass attempt at intimidation," said Helen Grant, disgusted. "It shows that the Daleks fear us. We're going to debate."

Alas, over the next day, all the other parties dropped out. The People's Front, the Ecology Party, the Pirate Party, the Democracy Movement, the Neoliberals, Alcohol is Safer than Bubbleshake, the Justice Party, the Expansionists, the Children of Jesus, the Security Party, the Heritage Party, and even Humanity First. There were many smaller parties who would usually have been clamouring to fill the vacuum, but none of them did. The debate was going to be a one-on-one: the Doctor versus the Daleks.

"Somehow, it always ends up like this," said the Doctor. Nardole had suggested that they should have the TARDIS ready backstage so they could retreat to it, but the Doctor pointed out that they could hardly abandon Babylon – or even all of Callisto – to a deadly Dalek rampage.

The Doctor declined make-up, but allowed the team to style his hair. They gave it some serious volume. He was dressed to the nines, but then when wasn't he? He wore a long brown suit jacket over a deep purple waistcoat and off-white shirt. It wasn't exactly regulation politico, but the Solidarity Party wasn't exactly a regulation party.

Then it was go time. The Doctor went out onto the stage and stood behind one of the two lecterns. His opponent, Dalek Krat from the Dalek Party, came out from the other side of the stage and parked behind the other lectern, facing out to the audience.

"Live in five, four, three…"

The audience broke into applause, which seemed odd to the Doctor, as he hadn't said anything yet.

"Hello, and welcome to the Election Debate. Participating today are Krat from the Dalek Party, and the Doctor from the Solidarity Party. We did invite a wide range of parties to participate, but other invitees dropped out. Our studio audience was been put together to be representative of the range of views here in Babylon. Now, I'll put our first question to you, Krat: what will your party do to keep Callisto safe?"

"THANK YOU, EM-I-LY. I DETERMINE THAT YOUR QUESTION IS VALID. MY OPPONENTS WANT TO OPEN UP CALLISTO TO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS AND ZYGONS, WHO WILL SURELY COMMIT MANY CRIMES. THEY WANT TO GIVE RADICAL ACTIVISTS THE RIGHT TO PROTEST AGAINST THE FREE SPEECH OF OTHERS. THEY WANT TO KEEP THE DEATH PENALTY ILLEGAL, EVEN FOR ZYGONS. ONLY THE DALEKS PARTY WILL ENFORCE THE LAW AND ORDER NEEDED TO KEEP YOUR DESCENDANTS SAFE AND PURE!"

There was some forceful but clearly isolated applause from the audience, while a few Daleks in the audience chanted the word "YES" rhythmically. This caused nervous laughter from the greater portion of the audience. The Daleks seemed completely unaware of the sexual innuendo.

"Strong words. The same question to you, Doctor: what will you party do to keep Callisto safe?"

"Thanks, Emily. My opponent uses the phrase 'law and order' as a soundbite, but really he just means that people he dislikes should be punished and those he favours should not. Have you ever noticed how the Dalek Party always calls for Dalek criminals to be treated with sympathy, while anti-Dalek activists should be imprisoned?"

"THERE ARE MANY VERY FINE DALEKS ON ALL SIDES."

"Krat, you will receive your chance to respond to the Doctor's points when he is finished. Please continue, Doctor."

"Thanks. The Solidarity Party has three priorities for making Callisto safer. Firstly, we will affirm the rights of every sapient individual with free will to life, liberty, and happiness, regardless of their gender, sex, species, tone, orientation, caste, age, place of birth, abilities, or status. We will launch an education programme designed to counter Dalek propaganda which has infested our public spaces."

"Secondly, as Daleks lack free will, and inherently seek to deprive other lifeforms of their life, we will not allow Daleks to live on Callisto unless they can prove that they possess autonomy and have permanently disabled their weapon function."

"Finally, we will expose media platforms that host pro-Dalek content and encourage mass boycotts. When companies refuse to moderate content, we will hold them to account for the harm that results. Of course, freedom of speech is vital to the functioning of our democracy, but companies like Kerblam! have taken things too far by knowingly and actively refusing to take any action to combat hatred."

"Doctor, you cannot seriously be suggesting that the Solidarity Party would ban Kerblam!? It is an essential service which many people rely on."

"INDEED. IT SEEMS LIKE THE SOL-I-DA-RIT-Y PAR-TY ARE THE REAL DAAAAAAAALEKS!"

"Emily, I don't think we would need to ban any platform. When people realise the role that Kerblam! has played in normalising Daleks, in giving Daleks a platform to spout their hatred without consequence, people will start to leave Kerblam! and Kerblam! will have to change their moderation policy in order to preserve their customer base. Money talks, and that includes your money!" the Doctor said, spiking the camera.

"Kraat, your turn to reply."

"FIRSTLY, I PUBLIC DISAVOW THE DAAAAALEKS," said Dalek Kraat. "I AM A CLASSIC SPECIES REALIST. IN OUR SYSTEM, THE ONLY MONEY THAT TALKS IS ZYGON MONEY. THE ZYGONS CONTROL THE MEDIA, AND THE ZYGONS ARE THE ONES WHO MUST BE EX-TER-MIN-ATED! ZYGONS WILL NOT REPLACE US!"

A single audience member clapped, and quickly stopped. One of the Daleks shouted "YES!", just the once. The others realised Kraat's mistake.

"You said that Zygons should be exterminated. Isn't that Dalek rhetoric?" said the Doctor.

"I… I MEANT TO SAY THAT ZYGONISTS SHOULD BE EXTERMINATED! THIS IS WHAT ZYGONS ALWAYS DO: TRY TO PAINT PATRIOTS AS EVIL…"

"You said 'Zygon' again," said the Doctor. "This is the face of the Daleks, everyone. This is what Kerblam! have been supporting. And you know what – they'll do it as long as there are more Daleks using their platform than there are anti-Dalek people leaving in disgust. Don't you think it is time you cancelled your account?"

The crowd stirred. There was carnage. The Daleks in the audience were swarmed by their neighbours. Some of them were tipped on their sides, others had their guns ripped off. A few tried shooting their assailants, who fell back in pain.

"They can't kill us all!" someone shouted, and the Doctor realised that it was Sally, brandishing a hockey stick. She swung it at a Dalek and broke right through its casing, sending sparks of electricity everywhere. The Zygons in the crowd transformed themselves into muscular monsters and torn the Daleks apart, to cheers from the thronged masses.

"EL-E-VATE!" Dalek Kraat shouted. He levitated himself just in time, as people – stagehands, audience members, and politicos alike – stormed on to get at him. Kraat flew out of the studio doors and away.

Epilogue

Callisto's democratic system was designed so that people could vote for parties that they felt completely represented them, rather than having to choose between ideals and electability. It was very rare for a party to get as much as 25% of the vote, because so many parties ran to represent different segments of society.

It was therefore a huge electoral shock when the Solidarity Party claimed 43% of the vote. They needed 50% in order to form a government, but were easily able to get enough support from other parties to form a strong and stable coalition government.

As the election night parties began to die down, Sally found the Doctor in a quiet room, speaking to Mo.

"Congratulation on your election," she said. "How are you feeling?"

"Oh, ready to crack on with the hard work of government," the Doctor said, with a wry smile.

"Really?" said Sally. "We really had to press-gang you into standing. I'm surprised you're not just running away at the first opportunity. There's a whole universe out there, after all."

"I think I'm needed here," said the Doctor. "Someone needs to stand up for the people here. It's scary how easy it was to get everyone to turn on the Daleks. If I'm not around, then someone else will get them to turn on someone who doesn't deserve it. Particularly the Zygons, who seem to be perpetual punching bags."

"People have always hated refugees," said Mo. "Zygons are even easier targets because of the body-swapping thing. It's… it's just disgusting, the way people act about it."

"You sound… committed," said Sally.

"I am," said Mo. "I'm staying here, Sally. I'm going to be the Doctor's chief of staff."

"Good on you, Mo," said Sally. "How does Clyde feel about it?"

"Clyde respects my decision," said Mo.

"I almost wish I could stay as well," said Sally. "But Ró and I have got to get back to Laoise. Can you just take us back, Doctor?"

The Doctor shook his head. "I'm staying here. It's been nice knowing you, Sally Sparrow. Thanks for being my friend. Go back to the TARDIS and it will take you home."

Sally felt a huge sinking feeling. Was this the end? The Doctor was settling down to be a politician on a moon of Jupiter in the 27th Century? She had thought he'd keep going forever. She thought… perhaps it was naïve, but she thought travelling with him would be an ongoing thing, now. It could give her a new lease of life, travelling again. There was so much she wanted to say, but she couldn't put it into words. "Thank you for everything, Doctor. For Larry, Róisín, Laoise, everything. Goodbye." She give Mo a hug, and went to find Róisín.

Sally walked with her wife back to the TARDIS. They had been so elated about the Solidarity Party's victory, but now that they were leaving the Doctor and Mo, they were leaden. Sally opened the door to the TARDIS, and they stepped in. It wasn't empty. There was Nardole, showing Libby round the console room.

"And this is where the multipolar Artron flow reverses its vector, actualising our potentiality and returning to the Eye of Harmony. It's a perfect closed system," he said. He looked up, and so did Libby. "And this is Sally and Róisín. They're from the 21st Century. But you know all that."

"Hi Libby," said Ró. "You coming with us?"

"No, my place is here," Libby said. "Nardole is just giving me a tour. Helen has offered me a job as a community organiser."

"Oh, congrats," said Ró.

"Nardole, the Doctor's staying here. Can you take us back to our time?"

"I'm staying?" said a familiar Scottish voice, and the Doctor stepped out from the far side of the console. "If I'd known that then I wouldn't have come here in the first place."

"Doctor!"

"Hello, Sally," said the Doctor. "I think you have had my duplicate. Clyde was very keen on staying, and Helen was very keen that someone who looks like me should stay to be part of the government, so we came to a mutually acceptable arrangement."

"That's why Mo was happy to stay. Clyde is also staying."

"Honestly, I think it was the other way around," said Nardole. "Clyde wouldn't have had the confidence to do it without Mo's support."

"Libby, thank you for all your help. Without you, we might not have met the resistance at all," said the Doctor.

"It's just what I do," said Libby.

"Thank you all the same. Are you sure you don't want to come with us? I can get you back here for tomorrow morning…"

"Don't tempt me," said Libby. "Right now it's not what I want to do. But do pop round if you're ever in the area. Goodbye, everyone."

"Look after Clyde and Mo for me," said Sally.

"I will," said Libby. Sally got the door for her as she trundled out.

"Right," said the Doctor. "Just the four of us, now. All of time and space, et cetera, you know the drill. Any requests?"

"Yes," said Sally. "Laoise. I want to check up on her. Make sure there are no aliens around. Give her some pointers to the future. Explain where her Mums have gone."

"You don't want to be accused of smothering her," said the Doctor.

"I'm not smothering her," said Sally. "I just want to make her safe and happy."

"Fine. You say she's at university? We can pop by. But we are not micro-managing her whole life. She'll have to take the same risks as everyone else."

Róisín took her wife's hand. "I think she can handle a bit of risk. It didn't do us any harm."

"We lost our legs."

"And we're doing fine. She'll do even better. She's got your looks and my brains."

"I've always thought she had your looks," said Sally, smiling.

"It doesn't matter," said the Doctor. "Unless you're speaking I don't think anyone could tell you apart."

The TARDIS flew off.

"OF COURSE I DISAVOW THE EXTREMIST TALK OF DALEK KRAAT, AND THE VIOLENCE COMMITTED BY DALEK PROTESTORS. HOWEVER, AT MOST DALEK RALLIES, IT IS NOTICEABLE THAT IT IS THE HUMANS, PARTICULARLY THE ANTIDA EXTREMISTS, WHO TURN VIOLENT. WE MUST ASK WHETHER HUMANS CAN EVER INTEGRATE SUCCESSFULLY INTO OUR SOCIETY."

"Well, it's interesting what you say. I don't always agree with everything you say, but you're completely right about Antida. Join us next week on the Pubin Report where I will interview Vray, the right-wing academic who was warned about his future conduct after students accused him of being a Dalek – and all because he expressed scepticism about the left's Zygonist agenda. Thanks for coming on, Yost."

"THANK YOU FOR HAVING ME ON, DAVE."

"Here's what I don't understand. You could take control of Callisto easily. This isn't a military moon, the people wouldn't be able to fight back. So why are you bothering with all this subterfuge?"

This seemed like a bad line of questioning to Libby. Wouldn't the Daleks find this provocative?

"WITH ONE DAAA-LEK, WE WOULD TAKE CALLISTO. WITH OUR WORDS, WE TAKE HUMANITY."

"No, no," said the Doctor. "Haven't you heard about sticks and stones?"

"DA-LEKS HAVE NO FEAR OF PRIMITIVE WEAPONRY!"

"It's a figure of speech. Words can do a lot, but you can't actually kill people with words."

"WE DO NOT NEED TO KILL HUMANITY TO TAKE THEIR SOCIETY."

"Ah, so you want to bend humanity to your will? Convince humanity that the Daleks are not their enemies?"

"WE WILL TURN HUMAN SOCIETY INTO A TOOL FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF THE DAAAA-LEKS!"

Libby felt a chill down her spine. Now it made sense. Now she understood why the Daleks hadn't just flown down and killed them. Now she understood why they tried to make their ideology seductive rather than simply using force. They didn't want Callisto. What use was this little rock? No, the Daleks wanted to convert the Callistians to their worldview.

"And then Callisto would propagate your views forever. Humans and Zygons and Silurians and Ice Warriors, all regurgitating Dalek Supremacy all across the universe, a whole civilisation dedicated to Dale ideology. And once you light the flame, it requires no more effort by the Daleks. You're turning people into versions of yourselves."

"YES, DOCTOR. AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!"

"Ah, well, I would say that's where you're wrong, but actually almost everything about you is wrong. There are lots of things I can do about it. I could, for example, record this conversation and play it to the people of Callisto. I've done that trick before, and it would work here.

Daleks that deny they are Daleks: "A DALEK INVASION OF EARTH? THAT REPORT IS INACCURATE! THERE ARE NO DALEKS ON EARTH. THERE HAVE NEVER BEEN DALEKS ON EARTH. DO NOT THROW THE WORD "DALEK" AROUND WITHOUT CARE!"

Actually there's quite a lot of room to play with fake news.

Human collaborators simultaneously denying that Daleks are invading, and claiming that the Daleks aren't that bad anyway.

Daleks that don't want to exterminate inferior life forms, merely force them to live in overcrowded ethnic ghettos.

"YOU CONDEMN THE DALEKS? I THOUGHT HUMANS HAD THE EMOTION THAT IS KNOWN AS "TOLERANCE". WHY WON'T YOU EXTEND TOLERANCE TOWARDS THE DALEKS?"

"Race realist" Daleks: "I DO NOT BELIEVE DALEKS ARE SUPERIOR, HOWEVER, DALEK SCIENTISTS HAVE CONDUCTED TESTS AND FOUND ALL OTHER LIFE FORMS TO BE INFERIOR. DALEKS DO NOT QUESTION OBJECTIVE DALEK DATA!"

"The best way of dealing with Daleks is through open and honest dialogue!" gets exterminated

"YOU COMPLAIN ABOUT DALEKS EX-TER-MIN-ATING INFERIOR SPECIES, BUT ARE SILENT WHEN IT COMES TO THE ISSUE OF HUMAN-ON-HUMAN MURDER!"

"THERE ARE MANY VERY FINE DALEKS."

"DALEKS DO NOT HAVE A PROBLEM WITH INFERIOR SPECIES. WE MUST EXTERMINATE YOU DUE TO YOUR INTERNATIONAL BANKING SYSTEM."

"IS IT NOT CURIOUS THAT MOST EARTH MEDIA IS CONTROLLED BY HUMANS? HOW CAN DALEKS EVER RECEIVE FAIR TREATMENT?"

If you wanted to get really dark then you could use Zygons as a stand-in for Jewish people or other ethnic minorities targeted by neo-Nazis.

Climax of the episode involves a swarm of people overcoming the Daleks

Final scene is a Dalek being interviewed on TV. "WHILE I DISAVOW THE ACTIONS OF ALL DALEKS WHO ENGAGE IN EX-TER-MIN-ATION, AT MOST DALEK RALLIES IT IS THE HUMANS WHO GET VIOLENT. SIGNIFICANT QUESTIONS REMAIN ABOUT WHETHER HUMANS CAN SUCCESSFULLY INTEGRATE INTO OUR SOCIETY." "Well, I don't entirely agree, but you certainly make good points about the intolerant left." "THANK YOU FOR HAVING ME, DAVE."