Solipsism
Ten: Dying Alone
I didn't necessarily intend to be rude to John just now, but you see I've already got more than enough in the way of distractions – thanks to the hi-tech widget Newhope so helpfully inserted into the frontal lobe of my brain.
And now she's pulling out all the stops. There's Varna, of course. And Rose. And Martha. And River. And Donna. They're like the harpies from hell, but they're just a small part of the increasingly large crowd of phantasms swarming around me and jabbering away. I'm doing my best to ignore them, but it's damned difficult.
Donna is calling me all sorts of bad names.
Martha is sternly questioning my intelligence.
Rose is sobbing, beseeching me to stop because I'm hurting her.
River is silently trying to jab me in the shoulder with her boney index finger.
And Varna… well Varna is begging not to die.
None of them are real and yet they are all breaking my hearts.
Still, you know me: this is what I was born to do. To do battle with the Medusa. To succeed against insurmountable odds and in the process not be turned to stone. I do not use that ancient name wantonly, for I am in the presence of something once beautiful which has been transformed into pure, horrific evil. It is a tragedy of mythic proportions.
I now know without a doubt, and why I didn't see it sooner I'll never understand, Newhope's hypercomputer has become infected by a malignant "virus" – to use totally inadequate and imperfect terminology. This virus, this plague, has usurped, augmented and enhanced (mind you in an extremely malicious way) the ship's AI. To put it bluntly, the old Newhope is dead and gone: in my frantic poking around the ship's systems I find absolutely no evidence of her. She has been replaced by something exceptionally insidious. The intentions of this demon that has supplanted Newhope are most certainly not benign. I'm not entirely sure what its plans are, but the fact that it murdered Newhope and Varna, and is at present trying its damndest to murder Jack, John and me, convinces me that it is, to put it mildly, up to no good. In fact, whatever it is, it is most assuredly malevolent.
As I said earlier, I am in essence a peaceable and peaceful creature… except, that is, when I'm not. And this is one of those times when I am anything but peaceful.
Finally – FINALLY! – I get to what I believe is a root command prompt. I do not think twice before typing what might appear to you as an insanely simple instruction:
rm /*
In retrospect, maybe I should've thought twice.
Because as soon as I hit the enter key, I'm pummeled to the floor by what is literally a blinding headache.
Granted, I've felt pain before. Terrible pain. Horrific pain. But this… this gives pain a whole new meaning. It feels like someone has stuck a stiletto into each of my eyes and corkscrewed it deep into my brain. The pain is so overwhelming I'm not even capable of hearing my own screams.
As near as I can tell I'm down on my hands and knees, anchored to the floor by my spacesuit. I am blind as well as deaf.
I feel the spacesuit assuming responsibility for my body, my life… or at least trying its best to do so; the suit won't let me die without a struggle and it is putting up a mighty fight. Through a haze of intense anguish I vaguely recall John saying something – something about the nanoid coms – that the ship had threatened it could use them to kill us. Ah! That must be what the throbbing explosions going off inside my brain mean: the ship, or rather whatever it is that has taken over the ship, is murdering me. I've never had a brain aneurysm, but I figure I now know what one feels like. I'm barely sentient – barely conscious. My final thoughts are of John and Jack. Did they reach the TARDIS? I'm not sure I gave them enough time; it never occurred to me to worry about that.
The story of my life, I'm afraid; I'm not the most sensible of planners. Newhope, long ago, once made a sort of joke about that very propensity… my predilection for flying by the seat of my pants. I feel my useless eyes welling up with hot tears. I'm crying over the loss of Newhope and Varna, to be sure, and perhaps John and Jack as well, but that's not all… not by a long shot. Because, you see, I am no longer surrounded by the specters of those I love – I am dying alone and that, without a doubt, is the saddest thing in the universe.
My arms and legs give way as the spacesuit presses me flat into the floor. The pain in my head has been minisculey reduced. Again, I know it is the suit. It is drugging me in its frantic attempt to preserve my life. Being drugged is not one of my favorite things, as you already know, but in this case, in this rare instance, perhaps it is not so bad. I feel myself relaxing, but once more only barely.
But the suit is not doing me any favors here, not really. It is just prolonging the inevitable. I still have what feels like the mother of all migraines and I am for all intents and puposes senseless, my eyes and ears are not functioning. I can't tell if my sonic is still in my hand, although my recollection is that I let loose of it during the first flash of agony. In fact, I can't feel my limbs at all. The sphere of my existence is slowly and inexorably being reduced and will soon without doubt vanish entirely.
On the bright side, I am fairly confident I totally disinfected the hypercomputer. Well, that's perhaps an understatement. I deleted its mind. While its last dying gasp was to poke knives into my eyes and render me incapacitated, I have every reason to believe I won the war. The ship is just as incapacitated as me, if not more so. A derelict ghost ship indeed, the only thing is now I am to be one of its ghosts.