PARADIGM – CHAPTER THREE: MOMMY
The Tardis control room was no longer empty.
Or was it?
The vapour from the fallen book had assumed a shape. Almost humanoid. But gaseous, diaphanous, barely visible. It was on the verge of dissipation, wavering slightly, like wheat in the breeze.
The Skape could feel it. After all those years of incarceration the effort of escaping from the cursed book had loosened its molecular structure, weakening the chains and blurring the patterns that it needed to remain viable.
Only its hate drove it on. Sheer blind vengeance was its engine.
It was now or never...
The Skape gasped out an emergency biometric scan of the vicinity. It was a weak effort but fortunately it found its mark close to hand. The scan locked onto the book lying open at its feet.
Yes. A pattern....
The Skape activated its emergency energy reserve. It swallowed the pattern hungrily, replenishing its own lost integrity.
Gradually, carefully, the Skape began to solidify, growing skin, blood, hair and bone in an agony of effort.
For a moment it stood blinking in the light, clenching and unclenching its fists. It felt its lungs inflate and its blood pump. It wallowed in the action of the sinews and muscles at its disposal. It took a tentative first step. Oh the pain – the glorious pain!
With a final convulsion, almost a reflex, the Skape's outer dermis rippled. Clothing covered its nakedness, matching the pattern exactly.
The Skape passed a trembling hand over the myriad controls of the torus-shaped console hovering in the centre of the room. Again its faint probe found a match and the Skape threw the indicated switch with some effort.
Pausing only to pick up its erstwhile prison of words, the Skape walked unsteadily towards the open door that had unfolded inwards at its touch.
It was alive – weakened, but alive. It would have its revenge on the Lord of Time.
.
We are home, Mommy.
I can see you sweetie.
What shall you tell them, Mommy?
Let's just listen for a while. There's a good boy.
Kim had not known what to expect when they were led into the mountain. A vision had flashed into her head of some Miss Haversham-like crone, sitting in a big chair, surveying all around her imperiously.
The journey was surprisingly short. They were led by the Childseer and half of his Acolytes. Kim and the Doctor were in the middle and the rest of the men brought up the rear. There was no chance of making a break for it. The rocky passage was too narrow.
All Kim could think about was they were getting further and further away from the Tardis.
The passage inclined down suddenly and they emerged into a radiance that momentarily hurt her eyes. It was a massive crystalline cavern, at least the size of a concert hall. The walls were purest white and seemed to almost throb with internal light.
There was no crone- like woman. No throne. In fact the cavern was devoid of anything – except for the display.
That was the only way Kim could describe it. The Display.
It hovered high up in the centre of the place, without support. A line of six huge cubes, glowing amber and almost holographic in nature. Reading from the left the first five cubes were motionless, each displaying a single character, like giant children's building bricks. The characters themselves meant nothing to Kim.
At the end of the line the sixth cube was rotating and tumbling in place, hieroglyphics fflashing across its face in an unending stream. It reminded Kim of the spinning reel of a slot-machine.
The child had moved ahead of them and knelt on the floor, facing the display. The Acolytes fanned out behind the Doctor and Kim, cutting off any chance of escape. They stood motionless.
Kim turned to her companion. "That's the biggest one-armed bandit -" She stopped short at the sight of the Doctor's face.
The colour had drained out of it. He was staring open-mouthed up at the display.
A cold fear gripped at Kim. He looked as though he had been hit by a thunderbolt. She tugged urgently at his sleeve. "Doctor! Doctor! Snap out of it. What's the matter?"
He turned his faraway eyes to her. He shook his head slightly and his eyes refocused.
"Sorry. Bit of a shock." He looked back to the display. "I've never seen anything get this close...."
"What are you talking about? Have you seen it before?"
He nodded, not taking his eyes off the blocks. " Something like it. Back on Earth, actually. A long time ago now. In a school. The Krillitanes tried but got nowhere near. Even the Toymaker could only solve three..."
"What is it ? Some sort of game?"
"It's a code. Incredibly ancient. Nobody knows its origin. It's got many different names...Codex Imperium...The Key to Time...Universalis Omata...Godmaker Prime..."
" The Da Vinci Code ?"
He didn't laugh. "It's most commonly known as 'The Skasis Paradigm'. The answer to everything. And they've cracked five elements!"
Kim looked at the sole rotating cube.
"What happens if they get the sixth?"
"SIX ! "chanted the Acolytes in unison. Violently. Just once.
Kim nearly jumped out of her skin.
"The end of this universe. The power to build a new one. In any image. New natural laws. New science. New everything." The Doctor's voice was steady...almost.
Kim trembled. "Doctor, they called me 'the Six' ".
"I know." The Doctor paced over to the kneeling Childseer. He snapped his fingers in front of those glazed eyes. There was no response. He shook the child by the shoulders. "Where is she? I need to speak to her! Where is your Mommy?"
The crystal walls around them pulsed.
"I am Mommy."
The voice was incredibly deep. It seemed to come at them from all directions and rolled around the cavern like towering surf.
The Doctor let go off the child and stood."My compliments, " he said, loudly. "I am the Doctor-"
"You are the irrelevance."
The Doctor's eyebrows crawled up. "I've been called many things in my time but never that."
"You have knowledge of the Paradigm. That is clear. But it is the Gideon I need. She is the Six."
"SIX !" chanted the Acolytes again.
"I'M NOTHING!" screamed Kim.
"You will complete the Paradigm. This Universe is old. Tired. The time is now. "
"Oh, I see," said the Doctor, snapping his fingers. "You're just another good old megalomaniac who wants everything bowing down before it. Creation in your own image. "
There was a sound like rattling stones in a can. It might have been a chuckle.
"That is not in my program. I am designed to solve the Paradigm, not implement it. It will be the Six who will become the Creatrix Supreme. It has been foretold."
There was a moment of dead silence.
"The Gideon. The God."
(END OF CHAPTER 3)