Chapter 26

Righting Wrongs

The Smith's Residence.

Northumberland Place.

Notting Hill, London.

'Donna?' John called out as he and Rose came up from the basement.

['In the kitchen,'] they heard Donna-the-Robot call in reply.

They went into the kitchen and saw her sitting at the breakfast bar with her charging lead plugged in. ['Yer back then?']

John gave a little laugh. 'Yeah, we're back . . . I, er, just wanted to say thank you. Y'know, for helping us save the evening.'

She gave them a lopsided smile on her screen. ['Yer welcome. But I did have a bit of an advantage, seein' as my personality subprocessor is based on Donna's psyche.']

'Tellin' her yer couldn't lie was a nice trick as well,' Rose said with a grin.

['Yeah. It's all about psychology. I knew Donna would believe it, and then she'd believe your story.']

Rose walked over and hugged her. 'Thanks again, Donna.'

['No problem. Now leave me alone and let me charge, or you'll have no breakfasts in the mornin','] she said with mock annoyance.

'Tell you what Donna. Why don't you have the day off tomorrow? Our way of saying thanks,' John suggested.

['And do what? Sit in the kitchen, twiddling me thumbs?']

'We could drop you off on Pasquite for the day,' Rose offered. Pasquite was a robot planet which the Doctor and Donna Noble had visited in the old universe. It had an amazing machine theme park, with a simulator which showed what it was like to be organic.

['Seriously? You'd do that for me?'] Donna asked.

'Of course we would. You're one of the family,' Rose said.

['Yeah . . . Okay. I'll have a day out. Brilliant.']

'Goodnight Donna,' John said, and they left her to charge.

Rose kissed him on the cheek. 'That was a lovely thought. I think you should have a reward for bein' so nice,' she said, with her tongue between her teeth smile and a twinkle in her eye.

'Ooh. What have you got in mind Misses Smith?'

'You Doctor Smith, are telepathic.'

He had a big grin on his face, and he waggled his eyebrows. 'You're right. I am.' He took her hand and led her up the stairs to their bedroom.

Rose was lying with her leg and arm across John, with her head nestled into his shoulder. His arm was around her shoulder, stroking her blond locks. She roused slowly and kissed his chest.

'Mornin' stud,' she said dreamily as she drew circles around his nipple.

He chuckled. 'Morning sex kitten.'

'Ooh. Sex kitten eh?' She looked over his chest towards the door and grinned as she saw her top, black lacy bra, leather mini skirt, boots and her black knickers, mixed in with John's shirt, chino's, shorts and Converse; strewn like a trail of breadcrumbs from the door to the bed.

'Oh, we'd better get up. Don't forget we've given Donna the day off,' she reminded him.

'I haven't forgotten, and we've still got time for one more,' he replied, as he rolled on top of her and pulled the duvet over them.

Rickey the cyberdog trotted into Eyulf's bedroom and clambered up onto his bed. He proceeded to snuffle in his ear, and lick his face.

Mornin' Rickey,' he said, stroking his pet's head and scratching its ear. 'Is it that time already?'

The mechanical pet wagged his tail in satisfaction, jumped off the bed, and trotted out of the door to find the next recipient of his friendly wake up call. He moved across the transdimensional landing of the "larger on the inside" house, and into the bedroom opposite.

Juleshka was asleep on her side, and Rickey stood on his hind legs with his front paws on the bed. He gently licked her cute, button nose, and she stirred as she wiped her damp nose. Her eyes flickered open, and a smile spread across her face as she saw the dog balancing in front of her, wagging its tail.

She grabbed his ears and kissed him on the nose. 'Morning Rickey.' He panted excitedly, licked her nose again, and trotted out of the room.

He went back to the main part of the house and made his way into Jason's room. Once again he jumped up onto the bed and snuffled in his ear, and licked his face.

'Hee, hee. Morning Rickey. I'm getting up,' Jason told him.

Rickey headed for the kitchen to announce that his programming was complete and his three charges were awake.

'Mornin' Rickey,' Rose said. 'Everybody awake?'

"Woof."

'Good boy.' She picked a battery "treat" out of a bowl on the counter and flicked it in the air.

Rickey scampered into position, caught the treat in his mouth and swallowed it. She heard the children coming down the stairs, and saw them coming down the hallway towards the kitchen.

'Mornin'. What d'yer want for breakfast?' Rose asked.

EJ frowned. 'Er, cornflakes please Mum . . . Where's Donna?'

'On Pasquite,' John said as he came out of the basement. 'We gave her the day off.'

'Oh that's nice for her,' Juleshka said. 'Weetabix please Mum.'

'Can I have Rice Krispies please,' Jason asked.

'I'll get that for you Son,' John said, and helped Rose get the children ready for their day.

Rose ate her toast and drank her tea, as she prepared Juleshka and Jason's school bags. Eyulf sorted his own bag.

['Alice is here, Rose,'] Donna-the-House announced.

'Thanks Donna,' Rose replied.

'Does Donna the House get a day off?' Jason asked.

['What am I gonna do, grow stilts an' go for a walk?'] Donna laughed.

'With that TARDIS coral in your walls I wouldn't put it past you, ' John said.

['Ooh. That's a thought,'] Donna joked. ['No Jason. I'm fine Sweetheart. I'm interfacing with my robot body through the TARDIS, so I'm there as well.']

'Morning everyone,' Alice greeted them as she entered the kitchen.

'Morning Alice / Auntie Alice,' everyone replied.

'Where's Donna?' Alice asked.

['Day off,'] Donna-the-House told her. ['At the moment I'm bein' chatted up by this maintenance droid. He's gorgeous. All shiny and glintin'. And those strong hands . . . he can run them over my body any day.']

'Donna! Children present,' Rose chided as they had a fit of the giggles.

['Oops!. Sorry,'] she said in a way that implied she wasn't sorry at all.

Rose finished her tea and put the cup in the dishwasher with her plate. She grabbed her bag, snogged John, and kissed each of her children on their cheeks.

'Bye kids, bye Donna. Have a good day. See ya later John,' she said as she went down the hallway.

They climbed into Alice's car and set off down Northumberland Place, turning right onto Talbot Road and right again onto Westbourne Park Road, heading towards Edgware where they could join the Westway.

'How did the dinner party go?' Alice asked, as she drove towards Harrow Road.

'Oh don't ask,' Rose said with a laugh. 'We were all awkward like to start with, and then we got laughin' and everythin' settled down. And then we came to tell our story and Donna didn't believe it. She thought we were makin' fun of her and that we'd only invited her 'cos she was common.'

'Oh no. What did you do?' Alice asked.

'Well, Donna the Robot stepped into the room and said she'd tell our story 'cos she was programmed not to lie.'

'I didn't know that.'

'No, she isn't. It was a lie. But Donna didn't know that and she believed it. Fortunately, it also meant that she believed our story.'

'Hah! Clever bit of psychology.'

'Yeah. That's what Donna the Robot said. We gave her the day off for helpin' us out. Also, we gave them a lift home in the TARDIS, and that sealed it.'

'Good. So are you going to meet up again?' Alice inquired.

'Yeah. We're goin' to theirs next time. Oh, and we had a message from the archivist at the Shadow Proclamation while we were in the TARDIS. She's found all the suspected cases of xenogenesis that are on record. She sent us the files.'

'Hmm. I'd like to take a look at those. I might be able to profile the people responsible and find out a bit more about them,' Alice told her.

'Couldn't hurt,' Rose said. 'I can download them onto my phone and send them to you.'

'Thank you.'

Torchwood Special Operations Standby Room.

Torchwood Tower, Canary Wharf.

08:10.

'. . . And André. As Angel is off duty today, I've put you on Despatch,' Rose said as she finished the briefing. 'Okay people, vamoosh.'

"Ace", "Numbers", "Irish" and "Welsh" headed for the lift, whilst the rest of the watch headed for the kitchen or the sofas. André headed towards the Despatch Office.

'André,' Rose called after him, and he turned. 'How's Angel?'

'Nervous . . . Excited at the same time,' he replied.

Rose gave a little laugh. 'Understandable, but she'll be in good hands. What time's her appointment?'

'Eleven hundred in the Day Case Unit.'

'Okay. I'll come and relieve you on Despatch so that you can go and be with her,' Rose told him.

'Thank you Rose. Angel would appreciate that.'

'No problem,' she replied with a smile.

At 09:35, Rose went to the kitchen area and poured two mugs of tea. She picked them both up and handed one to John just as he arrived.

'Hah! Lovely,' he said as he kissed her on the lips.

'Have you got Angel's stents? Her procedure's at eleven,' Rose asked.

John reached in his jacket pocket and took out a clear plastic package with some thin mesh tubes in it. 'Yep. The TARDIS has sterilised them and they're ready to go. A miracle of bioengineering.'

'Was it as easy as you thought?'

'The enzymes to modify André's little swimmers was a cinch. However, when I looked at Angel's genome I realised I'd have to modify that as well. If you recall, she was an asexual drone when she was picked up by the police, and then metamorphosed to female.'

'Oh yeah. How'd ya get around that then?'

'I used the TARDIS to decode her genome and introduced messenger RNA to rewrite the DNA in the egg. That will induce the metamorphosis in utero.'

'Brilliant,' Rose said, and then had a thought. 'Will their babies have wings?'

'Dunno. It's a flip of a coin. Depends on who's got the dominant genes.' He finished his tea and kissed her again. 'I'd better get these to the Day Case Unit. See you later.'

The TARDIS.

10-3-17-0-1 by 0-2 from galactic zero centre.

John and Rose's lunch hour.

Sometime in Earth's past.

Harkenbrokken was a level six planet with two moons, both of which were colonised. Being level six, the Harkenbrokkenens had survived the customary ecological and nuclear disasters, along with global warming, and now had a peaceful, civilised world, powered by clean energy.

There were four main continents with a number of large islands dotted between them. The TARDIS had landed in a small community in the northern territory of the southern continent, and John and Rose had sought out the leader of the town. They told him they were following up on a report received by the Shadow Proclamation, and had information, as well as an offer of help.

'So who are these children that our women are carrying?' The mayor of the small township asked John and Rose. They were in his office in the town centre.

'We don't know where they came from, or who impregnates the women. We do know that the children have a psionic ability which can be detrimental to society,' John explained.

'Psionic ability?'

'They are able to compel people to do their bidding. As you can imagine, when the authorities find this out, they will want to examine the children to try and control these psionic abilities for themselves,' John continued.

'Or they'll be terrified of them and try to kill them,' Rose added.

'Well, we've managed to keep this to ourselves so far, but if what you say is true, it looks as though we will have to abort these pregnancies,' the mayor said sadly. Like John, he was no fan of genocide.

'They won't let you,' John told him. 'The babies will have already developed the part of the brain which has the psionic abilities, and their survival instinct will kick in. The mother's won't consent to a termination, and if you try to do it by force . . . You'll be killed in your sleep by the women.'

'Then what do we do?'

''We have a technique that will restructure their brains and render them harmless,' John said, and then scratched the back of his head. 'Welll, I can't guarantee they won't be a problem when they're teenagers, but who can?'

'John,' Rose cut in. 'What he's tryin' to say is that they will be normal children with a telepathic link with each other. They won't be able to force anyone to do anythin'.'

'Once they are rendered harmless, we can safely extract them from the women who don't want them and gestate them in an artificial uterus,' John explained.

'And for anyone who wants to keep the babies, this telepathic link isn't dangerous?'

'No. Our kids have it. Me and John have it, and it's brilliant. If one of us learns somethin' or experiences somethin', then we can share it,' Rose told him.

'And what are the children like? I presume they are like us?' the mayor asked.

'We rescued one recently and disabled his psionic powers. He was just a normal, scared, twelve year old kid with blond hair and golden eyes. Our kids got on with him okay,' John said. 'He's the one I used to develop the technique on. Once we'd neutralised the threat, we took him back to his world and used it on his brothers and sisters.'

'I would have thought performing neurosurgery on someone who can stop you with a thought would have been difficult,' the mayor said.

'That's the beauty of it. They didn't know. I used programmed nanogenes. They walked into an invisible cloud of them, and hey presto, cured.'

'And you will do that for us?'

'Er . . . already done,' John said sheepishly holding up the nanogene dispenser.

'Amazing!' the mayor said. 'And what happened to the children when you made them impotent? I can imagine they weren't very popular.'

'Yer can say that again,' Rose said.

Before the mayor could say it again, not being used to a human's turn of phrase, John put his hand up to stop him. 'To protect themselves from attack by a frightened society, they had taken complete, authoritarian control of the world. We had to take them to the Shadow Proclamation for their own protection. Fortunately, the embryos your women have will not have that problem.'

'Hmm. In that case, I will call a meeting and put it to the people. I know some couples already want to keep their babies. For those women who don't, we will offer your solution,' the mayor said with a reassuring smile.

'Thank you,' Rose said. 'I hope everything goes well.'

Torchwood Special Operations Standby Room.

Torchwood Tower, Canary Wharf.

14:00.

The TARDIS materialised on the designated landing pad within the black and yellow tape on the floor. The right hand door opened inwards, and Rose stepped out, with John following.

'High guys. We're back,' Rose called out.

'Been somewhere nice,' Jake asked.

'Harkenbrokken,' John told him. 'Nice little place in the outer rim. And a lot nicer now they're not going to commit genocide.'

'Ah. One of the places like Dunwich,' Gwen realised.

'Yeah. We're working our way down the list we got from the Shadow Proclamation,' Rose told her.

'What? In your lunchtime?' Amy asked.

'Yeah. We had lunch in this nice little bistro in the town. Lovely couple who ran it. They're makin' plans for when the baby arrives, and have even agreed to take in another baby from a single woman who doesn't want hers,' Rose explained. 'I hope the rest go as easy as that one.'

Alice DiMaggio entered Special Operations and headed towards John and Rose. 'Ah, you're back John. Chrissie said you'd taken Rose out to lunch . . . I just wanted to ask you about those files from the Shadow Proclamation.'

'Oh yes. What about them?'

'Well it's the numbers. Are they coordinates?'

'Yes. Galactic coordinates. Why do you ask?' John queried.

'I just wondered if there was a way of seeing them on a map of some kind. I'm just curious.'

'There are star charts on the server. I uploaded them from the TARDIS for Astrophysics,' John informed her. 'If you pop up there, they'll be only too happy to show you how to use them. You'd have thought all their Christmases had come together when I showed the charts to them.'

'Thanks John. I'll pop up there and have a look.'

'Are you up to somethin'?' Rose asked suspiciously.

Alice smiled. 'It's just a technique we used in profiling I want to try. If it works, I can write a paper on it . . . I'll let you know if I've got anything.'

'Okay. See ya later,' Rose said. She gave John a peck on the lips before making her way to the office to take over from Chrissie, who had been covering her for lunch. ['Oh, John. Why don't I take the TARDIS home at the end of my shift, and I can start the dinner.']

['Good idea, then I could pick up the kids in the car, and fetch Donna when I get home.']

['Perfect. See ya later Love.']

By 16:00, she'd produced the handover report and briefed the White Watch Supervisor. She was walking across the Standby Room towards the TARDIS, when she saw André.

'André? How's Angel now?' She asked him. She knew the procedure had gone well, as they'd had a chat when he'd come back to the Despatch Office before lunch.

'Good thank you Rose. I'm just on my way to collect her from Day Case,' he replied.

'That's great.' she gave him a cheeky smile. 'And how long before . . . y'know.'

André matched her smile. 'Doctor Jones said to give it 24 hours to let the stents settle in and start releasing the substances.'

'Well, good luck with everythin'.'

'Thank you Rose . . . and John of course.'