.15. Faded Memories
Boudicca-Donna was back in the morning, hauling just one man this time. When they stepped into the room, Ace nudged Gold under his ribs.
"Oww, what?"
"Don't you recognise him? It's the guy in the suit!"
"What?" Gold turned on his bed and ogled the slim man standing behind Boudicca, dazed expression on his face. "It's him, all right. Told you he wasn't a program."
"A player, just like us," Ace exclaimed. "But, blimey, he's blank!"
Boudicca pursed her lips and gave both boys a piercing stare, but she didn't say a word. She just swept her eyes towards Corrie, seated with her knees up on a bed next to her mum – absolutely still and seemingly dead. As if sensing the woman's questioning gaze, the girl looked up, biting her lips and plucking loose threads from her torn overalls. She looked at Ace's projection briefly and shrugged. "I've no idea," her gesture said. "He's simply came back."
Boudicca shrugged as well, moved a chair away from the table and seated the man accompanying her. She had to use a bit of physical force to do it. Finally the man's knees gave way and he slumped on the chair. He was looking vaguely into space, which made him look blind. He might have been blind as well; although he was gazing straight ahead, he didn't seem to see anything. Boudicca grabbed another chair and sat down opposite him, staring at his face intently.
"Doctor?" she whispered. There was unusual warmth and pleading in her voice. "Can you hear me? Doctor?"
"He looks like one of them," Ace murmured. He shivered and turned to Gold. "Wonder what scared him so much?"
Gold only shrugged his shoulders and sunk back into pillows.
"Doctor?" Boudicca repeated. "Doctor? Oh, you bloody spaceman! I told you to follow me! Once, just once, you could have listened!"
Josh, the man the Doctor rescued from a space-station's simulation, approached her, his magnetic boots clicking on the floor.
"Can I help you with something?"
Boudicca gave him an absent look.
"Talk to him," she answered. She got up, unsheathing her bronze knife. "Don't stop talking. I'll try to find her..."
She carved a complicated ideogram in the air. Josh blinked, surprised, as she disappeared suddenly, without any in-between phase. She just was there and then she wasn't.
"Simon was right," said Gold from his bed. "She is an emergency protocol. I just wonder if it works. If anything at all still works."
Josh slumped on the chair previously taken by Boudicca. He outstretched his hand hesitantly and moved it in front of the slim man's eyes. The man's expression didn't change. Josh sighed heavily.
"Talk to you, huh? Fine. All right. So... there's... wait... there's forty seven of us here now. Most of us doing just fine, but some did reset, just like you. We've found water and some biscuits; I know it's useless in the projection, but it boosts morale. And the girls tidied this mess a little..."
The man was staring straight ahead vacantly. If he could hear and understand, he didn't let it show. Josh hesitated and moved back on the chair. He sighed deeply and ran his fingers through his hair.
"It's bloody pointless!"
"What?" asked Gold getting up from the bed and coming closer. He didn't look at the Doctor; his eyes were moving from side to side, as if he was scrutinising the air on both sides of the man sitting on the chair. Josh thought it weird but didn't comment.
"What?" Gold repeated.
"He's not breathing." Josh shook his head. "But it doesn't mean anything. All of this... it's just a projection... our bodies... the air..." He faltered.
"And them?" the boy asked.
"Them who?" Josh turned on his chair and looked at him surprised.
"Doesn't matter," Gold muttered.
"I see no point in talking to him," Josh observed gloomily.
"He wasn't listening anyway. Not in that racket."
"What ra...?"
"...CHEEKY AND ANYWAY I CAN'T BE WORRIED ABOUT IT NOW, I HAVE PLENTY ON MY HEAD! HA!"
Josh sprang up from the chair, stumbled and fell flat on the floor, painfully hitting his elbows. The slim man in the suit, the Doctor, who up until now reminded a plastic mannequin, was looking around wildly, his eyes wide.
"NONE OF YOU IS REAL, NONE OF YOU!" he shouted, broke off, swallowed and said much quieter: "I'm talking to someone only I can see, right?"
Josh was too shocked to answer, but Gold spoke calmly:
"More or less."
"Oooo... I know you!" The man pointed his finger at the boy. "We met at the lake, Excalibur, you were quite polite, not like your friend, didn't have my trainers... And I've seen you in your chamber; you didn't look too good."
"Why?" Gold winced, alarmed. "Is something wrong with... with my body?"
"No, no, no, no!" the Doctor negated urgently. "Your body is quite safe; it's your mind that's in danger. The level of stress... Ha! What? Where are we...? Is this a mushroom? Are we inside a mushroom?"
"It's a School; games for the kids; and yes, this is a toadstool house," Gold said. "It's all right, though, you're safe here."
"Just stay away from the elves," added another boy, fair haired, still wearing a shiny armour, but without a fancy cloak now. Doctor gave him a long, scrutinising look from under a furrowed brow.
"Riiiiight." He reached his pocket, took out that funny pen of his and pointed it at Ace. For a while the pen (or whatever it was) hummed on the verge of audibility. The Doctor's dark eyes seemed to bore into Ace. Suddenly the man exhaled, averted his eyes and carelessly tossed his pen in the air. "Elves, you say?"
"Yup," murmured Ace, a bit perplexed by the examination with a shining and singing gizmo. "Elves."
The Doctor turned his back on him. He outstretched both hands and before Gold had a chance to ask what he planned to do, he pulled a pylon of the exit gate out of thin air. He looked back at completely puzzled boys and at Josh, still sitting on the floor, his eyes bulging.
"Behold the power of human mind," the Doctor said seriously and then he laughed heartily. "Well, I'm not human. Still, my mind is quite powerful."
"How did you do that?" Ace stammered.
"I've no time for explanations," the Doctor grumbled. "You..." he waved at Gold. "Can you keep cool long enough to tell me how you got here?"
"We've been brought here by Boudicca... Donna," said Gold. "I'm too tired to loose my cool."
"Boudicca?" The Doctor laughed dryly, his fingers flying over the gate's keyboard. "How lovely. I named her the Ancient Donna. A bit rude of me, mind you; compared to her it's me who's ancient."
"And the other one?"
"The other one?" The Doctor turned to Gold with his eyebrows furrowed.
"I saw both of them," the boy explained. "I was close to reset when... Anyway, since then I can see weird things. They make my head spin. All of those..." he waved his hand vaguely. "They are just codes; entwining, untwining; series of numerical records; and yet they look like Boudicca, like Ace..."
"Hmm," the Doctor muttered. "Extremely useful."
Gold came closer and looked at the Doctor's fingers flitting over the keyboard.
"Nothing's happening," he said. "It's like you were playing with a mock-up."
"Yeaaah." The Doctor stopped trying to key in commands and, for a change, pointed his whistling device at the gate's panel. "What about now?"
"Now's better." Gold gave him a hesitant smile. "What is it, that glow stick?"
"My sonic screwdriver," the Doctor said absently.
"Sonic, right?"
"Sonic."
"Ingenious."
"Well, thank you."
"Gold?" Ace called uncertainly. "Gold, what are you doing there?"
"No, stay away," the Doctor reacted immediately. "Don't you go, Gold. I need an expert at numerical records."
"It's not my name," said the boy darkly.
"What?"
"Gold. It's not my name. We invented our avatars; a hundred years ago, still at School. Gold and Ace. His name's Andrew and I am Phillip. Phillip Bright. These women... That woman... Donna... She seems to know you pretty well."
"Yeaaah..." There was something odd in the man's voice.
"But she's not real?" Gold/Phillip continued.
"She's not."
"Is she your projection? Your friend? Your companion?"
"She used to be. Not anymore. Boudicca has been... extracted from my memories... I think."
"And the other one?"
"Her as well."
"They look the same."
"They're not." There was a definite full stop after the last sentence. The Doctor kept tweaking with the panel, his brow knitted and lips pursed.
"Our memories... they're changing into nightmares. All of them, no exceptions. But one of your exes seems to be pretty friendly. My projection went completely berserk." The boy gave Ace a furtive look. "He tried to kill me. I mean, our projections, they have no gentle twins. But she... that Donna of yours..."
"They are both nightmares," the man whispered. He sucked the air through his lips. "Believe you me. Just... one of them is an Emporium nightmare. And one is mine."
"Boudicca looks pretty placid for a nightmare."
"Not all of your nightmares have to swing a bloody axe." The man smiled gently.
"Why then...?"
"I've lost her," slowly said the Doctor. "Some time ago. She's... She's gone."
"Dead?"
"No. Not quite. She's just... inaccessible." The man pushed away from the panel. He shrugged, dabbing at his eye with an index finger for a while; thoughtful expression on his face. "She's not dead and she's not alive. She just is. My Donna. Just is. And that's not... that's not enough... So, I came here to calculate the odds, to tie loose ends, to plan and to execute my plans in what you call a virtual reality, because there's no room for errors in real life. And then the computer goes kablooey. Just my luck. But it's gonna be all right, Phillip. As soon as we're out, we can switch off the computer, and then our nightmares won't bother us anymore. At least not when we're awake."
"Yeah. You know what? I'm going to stack myself on caffeine and taurine and all things energising, so I don't have to sleep till the end of my days," Phillip said seriously.
"I miss her." The man turned to the panel again, so Phillip wasn't even sure he heard that.
"It's the same with him," he sighed. "With Ace. With Andrew. He used to be my best mate and I've programmed him on the computer. Daft, eh?"
"Not really."
"He tried to kill me, remember?"
"But it seems that your Ace has a gentle twin after all."
"That?" Gold shrugged. "That's not Ace. That's just a shadow."
"So, how did you survive?" the man asked after a while.
"I don't know. Because I'm young, I guess. Adaptable. I don't have so many memories, or I don't feel guilty enough, or maybe I am not emotional enough, or I'm as tough as nails..." Gold laughed bitterly. "But it was close, you know? I was almost there."
"What happened?"
"I saw the real Ace. Just a stream of codes. I don't want to talk about it. Anyway, it may be dangerous to remember."
"Maybe you're right."
"I've lost him." Gold's voice trembled. "I've lost him forever. He's still here; I can remember him, sort of, but... The memory's faded. It is not real anymore, it is just a thought, a picture in my brain, and it will remain just a picture, fading. It's burnt. It's gone. I'm so sorry."
"Yeah," the Doctor whispered. Gold looked at him, surprised. He expected something more, anything. Grownups tended to be quite cruel in such things, they believed forgetting was... what... a miracle cure? A way to live your life? A sign of being reasonable? But this man wasn't certain of it. He didn't master the art of forgetting the way other grownups did. Or he wouldn't master it.
"Another one..." the Doctor murmured. He threw the sonic screwdriver from one hand to the other and stuck the glowing end to the side of the panel. "A merging circuit... Estimating mode at a low pass... Ooo, right, an octalinear, unsymmetrical projection transcoding field... now, of all times... We're cutting off the data input... THERE!
"Gold?"
Hearing Ace's concerned voice, Phillip looked back instinctively. He took in the house's walls, then just outlines of the house's walls, lines marking edges of the furniture, now devoid of texture and colour; but before he reached Ace's face, there was nothing but white fog in the spot his friend was supposed to be. Phillip winced and, in his panic, he returned his gaze to the Doctor.
"What has ha...?"
The man slowly straightened his back. He also was looking around, concerned.
"Yeees... Well... That didn't work out all together fine," he mumbled and put the sonic screwdriver to his ear, his brows knitted.
"But what?"
"I've managed to wake them up," the Doctor answered. "When they left adventures, their projections were automatically deleted. But why didn't I wake you up? Or me? Hmm?"
He twiddled with the sonic and listened to its singsong answer again. Bewilderment in his eyes, he pointed the sonic at his own chest.
"I don't understand," he admitted. "Why can't we leave?"
Phillip swallowed loudly and opened his mouth. For a while he felt as if he would not be able to speak out loud the words which needed to be spoken. One horrible thought had haunted him ever since he started to see codes hidden behind the images of the projection.
"Doctor," he whispered. "I think... I think we can't leave the projection, because... because we have nowhere to go back to."
The man looked at him rising one eyebrow in an almost comical expression of disbelief.
"Are you trying to say that..."
"We are dead," Phillip finished for him.