THE RHYTHMISTIS ROOM

It took the Doctor another hour to find the main control room. Though he had an image of the complex's layout on his goggles' display, it wasn't as though all of the super-secret sensitive stuff was labelled clearly.

That, and he had been distracted. It had now been a couple of hours since Martha had been injected with something, and hauled away. And the more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that Zone 2 Corabat had been forced into her system, a drug that the visiting masses were taking, in order to regulate their heartrates while they visited this planet.

He was convinced, because it made perfect sense.

And it made him feel ill.

As he walked about in the lower recesses of the complex, searching, he couldn't help but think the worst… he was grinding on a conversation he'd had with Martha a couple of days before, the one that had sent them both into a panic, and driven them to take the first three beta blockers to stave off cardiac arrest.

She had just endured some mild torture with putrid, glacial water, in hopes that she would give up certain information about the Doctor.

"They're trying to find out my weaknesses," he had said to her.

"Yes," she had replied. "That's not all, Doctor. They know about us. They asked me if you blew up a mountain because someone kidnapped Donna."

"I did blow up a mountain… after someone kidnapped Donna, but it wasn't because."

"Well, then they made a point of the fact that you don't feel about Donna the way you feel about me. Or, rather, they made a point of getting me to admit that."

The proper panic had begun then. "So, they want to see what will happen if someone does something to you, someone who's not just my friend, someone I love, someone… So, they know that the worst thing they can do to me is to inflict pain upon you." By then, he'd collapsed onto his knees. "Martha… what will they do… to you?"

Now he had a clearer idea of what to expect. And he almost wished he didn't.

But there was no time to dwell on any of this: he had a planet to recalibrate before he could think about anything else.

He had come upon what looked like a centralized control room. As he looked about and assessed the equipment, he saw that the room existed to regulate just about everything about the lives of the citizens of Sercaton: the water supply, access to information, food, entertainment, travel, et cetera. But the aspect of this planet that was the Congress' single largest tool in preventing rebellion, unauthorised reproduction, and generally any kind of chaos, was the one-hundred beat-per-minute rule, keeping everyone calm, on pain of death. He knew that whatever governed that process would not be in plain sight. It would be in a specialised area… at the very least.

It seemed as though today, there was a skeleton crew in the control room – not many around working the computers. This was always good news. Except, he knew that the guard whose uniform he'd stolen was basically an underling, and he'd already been "outranked" into giving up Martha. He wondered how he would get into a restricted area.

Looking at the uniformed guards around him, though, he wondered what it was that differentiated one rank from another. They all seemed to be wearing black wet-suits, and all of the helmets and goggles were identical to his eyes. Why had the guard who had taken Martha believed his name was "Sabrak?" Was there something about the uniform that identified him as such? Was the guard who normally wore this uniform Sabrak? Or had the other guard just been guessing at who he was?

"Commander Abbly?" a voice said.

The Doctor turned, only because he was surprised to hear anyone speak. He'd been moving through the room, he thought, figuratively below the radar, because the few crew that were there seemed to be immersed in their work.

To his surprise and horror, there was an officer, having stood up from his seat at a computer terminal, staring straight at him.

He decided to take advantage of the situation. "How did you know it was me?" he asked, in a tone that was neither threatening nor inquisitive… could have been a joke.

The officer cleared his throat nervously. "Well, sir, you're… you know…"

"What?"

There was hesitation, and then the officer said, "You're… short."

"Ah, I see," the Doctor said, again, hoping that his tone could have been interpreted as whimsical, or not.

"Pardon me sir, but I was told you'd be working on the Partitive Passes."

The Doctor's hearts sank... again. He knew what Partitive Passes were. He'd seen them in different places throughout the universe, mostly in regions where barbarism was commonplace, and people were oppressed and desperately wanting for entertainment. And again, the situation in which Martha was now trapped became more dire. Again, sickening pieces were falling into place, and he had to struggle to keep his voice normal.

"Working on the Partitive Passes?" he asked.

"Yes," said the officer. "I heard you were helping with the logistics. You know, selling, distributing, deciding the order."

"Yes, I was, but it's mostly sorted," the Doctor riffed.

"Actually yes, now you mention it, I'd heard that they'd been made so expensive that only a handful were sold."

This was good news to the Doctor… well, relatively speaking. But he said, "Yes, unfortunately. So instead, I've been asked to…"

"Oh, I see. Are you headed into the Rhythmistis room?"

Jackpot. Rhythmistis… that's got to be what I'm looking for!

"Erm, yes."

"General Alad was just in there."

"I know," the Doctor riffed, again. "He asked me to go back in and make a quick adjustment."

"What sort of adjustment?"

Once more, the Doctor hedged his tone, as he was not familiar with the protocol here. It could have been businesslike and no-nonsense, or genuinely inquiring.

"Is that your concern?" he asked.

"No, sir," said the officer. "Sorry, sir. It's just… you'll need this. Since the General was just in there, and not enough time has passed, the lock on the door will require an override code from my department."

The officer took a cardkey out of a pouch at his waist, and handed it to the Doctor.

"Thank you," said the Doctor, and he walked in the direction he'd been going, and tried to look like he knew what he was doing.

Calm down, Doctor… don't run. Put the Corabat and the Partitive Passes, and all things Martha out of your mind for now. Just concentrate, concentrate… slow…

One of the walls curved round to the left, and into somewhere unknown. He followed his intuition, and hoped he was right, otherwise, "Commander Abbly" would look like a right moron. Or worse, an impostor.

The corridor curved and curved and curved, then changed directions, and went off to the right, then back to the left again. The Doctor had just begun to wonder if he'd walked into a maze and was being watched, when a door appeared.

He could clearly see the plate upon which he was to press the officer's "override" card.

"Here we go," he muttered to himself, holding the card against the plate.

The door unlatched and opened just a hair, enough for him to push his fingers through the gap, and open it completely.

And once inside, he made sure it was shut completely. He wished he had the sonic screwdriver, in order to guarantee that he would not be interrupted. But, since it seemed as though the door-locking mechanism only allowed a certain number of entries in a certain amount of time, and required a special override if one was to come in at an unexpected time, he reckoned he was probably safe. Not that he was planning on setting up camp here.

He removed his rubber helmet and breathed actual air for a few moments. Then he looked over the control panel, and sighed, feeling daunted.

Most of his attention, until this point, had been focused on finding this room… now, he had to shift gears rather wildly, and really think.

He had to think about manipulating technology without the sonic screwdriver. He had to think about not launching an aggressive, full-frontal attack on their computer system, so that he wouldn't be thwarted, and/or caught and killed on the spot.

"Okay, Doctor," he sighed, trying to pep-talk himself. "Start with what you know. What do you know?"

Again, a conversation he'd had with Martha came into his mind. It had been just after they'd been brought to their cell, and Martha wondered how they could regulate all heartrates on the planet.

"Heavy saturation in the course of several years, coupled with airborne censors," he had said to her. "They'll have these tiny things that can fly about and detect beats per minute, and they'd be able to use a certain quantum communicator to flood the planet's atmosphere over time. This would create a very strong 'norm,' and a very strong reaction to deviation from that norm."

The controls included a large screen that had, at the bottom, a clear representation of the planet's overall heartrate. The universe over, a visual like this was recognizable – a zigzag pattern, accompanied by some measurement of time passing, and beats per minute.

A panel off to the right had a cover over it, and the cover read Nanobot recalibration.

Tiny things that can fly about and detect… he'd told Martha.

He opened the cover, and found an "engage" switch, and he flipped it.

Immediately on the screen, a field labelled Nanobot recalibration came up, waiting for a command.

"A good place to start," he muttered. Then he added, "Ish."

Because, he knew that the original calibration of the planet, even with the help of nanobots, had taken years, way back when this so-called civilization was new. He needed to achieve the same type of normalising oversaturation in the next hour.

"Sure, Doctor. Piece of cake."

He sighed, thinking. As usual, he stood up, and began to pace. Often, when he did this, trying to focus on a particular problem, he'd have absent thoughts that had little to do with a solution, but it was a by-product of having a complex, observant, absorbent mind.

This time, among his absent thoughts was, "Blimey this is a small room. Four paces are all I can take before I have to turn around. I would have thought that a control room this important would be bigger and grander. Then again…"

It's a small room. It's a very small room.

And I have two hearts.

An idea occurred to him… it wasn't a good idea, particularly, but it was all he had, in the absence of a sonic screwdriver. And it might work.

He used the ball-controlled mouse-like dot on the screen to indicate that he'd like a "status update" on the nanobots.

"In stasis," the computer replied. "Last used…" It gave a date that indicated that the nanobots had not been deployed in a few months.

That meant that all of the nanobots were at his disposal. The bots were the chief tool that the Congress used in controlling the heartrates of the populace. Everyone's heartrate stayed below one hundred beats per minute, and every now and then, the Rhythmistis technician would send out the fleet of nanobots to detect heartrates, and send the data back to the computer. The average heartrate detected would become "the norm," and an acceptable standard deviation would be set as the maximum.

Like everything, the system was prone to entropy, but they could keep it maintained by deploying the bots at regular intervals.

This was basically how it had been done when it all started two thousand years before, with the despotic ruler Lubon the Terrible, wanting to control the masses. Except, not only had they had several years to perfect it, but they had also had a quantum communicator at their disposal, which would have been used to flood the planet's atmosphere with the normalised rhythm. Since then, that type of machinery had become illegal in this sector of the universe.

The Doctor didn't really believe that the device's becoming illegal would stop the Congress of Sercaton from using it anyway, but he also knew that after the initial calibration had been done, they wouldn't need it again. Also, their computer systems had been improved since then (hence the TARDIS' ability to accidentally penetrate a previously-closed atmosphere).

But whatever. It just meant that he probably wouldn't be able to supercharge a quantum communicator in order to get this job done more quickly.

"That's okay," he said aloud. "We're in tight quarters and I've got two hearts. Which might sound daft to anyone listening, so it's a good thing no-one is listening."

What he needed was to normalize the atmosphere with a much higher maximum heartrate than one hundred beats per minute, so that the TARDIS could come back, without feeling strangled.

"But who says atmosphere means the planet's atmosphere, eh?"

The computer was waiting for further commands concerning the nanobots. He clicked on, "Recalibrate."

The computer asked for coordinates, and then gave the Doctor the choice to click on a default setting, that would send the bots all over the planet. He clicked on "Manual," then typed in "Rhythmistis Room."

The computer took a frighteningly long time to process this.

Then, it asked, "You have commanded that all recalibrating nanobots be sent to the Rhythmistis Room, within the Congress of Sercaton. Is this correct?"

"Yes," the Doctor said aloud, as he clicked on "Yes."

"Are you sure?" the computer asked.

"Oh, for crying out loud, yes," he sighed, and clicked.

"Please wait," the computer said.

He took this opportunity to agitate his body. It would be no small feat, since he'd taken beta blockers, but it could be done. He began doing jumping jacks as fast as he could.

After he'd done a hundred, then he dropped to the floor, and forced himself to do push-ups in an unnaturally quick rhythm.

When he couldn't anymore, he stood up again, and ran in place. He tried to invoke the image of a fan, moving blindingly fast, displacing the air around it. He ran and ran, pulling his knees all the way up to his chest each time he took a step, expending as much energy as possible. He began to sweat and he felt his heartrate rise, even against the blockers' restriction…

He ran faster and faster until it hurt, and his voice rang out in the tight space, as he screamed with the strain and pain…

And suddenly, the message on the screen said Nanobots deployed, and he stopped moving.

Billions of bug-like robots began to appear in the room, darkening it little by little, and the buzz became deafening.

The Doctor panted, "Oh boy. This is going to hurt."

Okay, again, perhaps not the most pulse-pounding chapter in history, but I'd like to hear from you anyway! Reviews are love, and have been precious and few on this story... thank you for reading!

(Sorry if the explanation of what he's doing is a bit vague... if you'd like a better one, PM me.)