Chapter 12
The Link
"You're a genius," said the Doctor. "You're stone-cold brilliant. You really are."
The Master cracked a smile, then the Doctor kicked him in the shin and he collapsed onto the floor once more.
"You," bellowed the Doctor, "should've known better than to do that!"
"Hey," Jack protested, "enough with the violence. That's my body."
Alonso stood bewildered. "What do you mean, Doctor? What has he done?"
"Jack is a fixed point," the Doctor explained, speaking quickly as he turned back to sonicking the psychograft. "His timeline must always happen the same way. But now he is both dead and immortal simultaneously. Time has to exert itself to sustain the paradox. Its very fabric is compromised. That's why the Trickster could siphon it into the limbo dimensions."
"So what happens in the limbo dimensions?" Jack asked.
"Everything," replied the Doctor, "all at once. All wave functions will collapse. Every possible future and past will occur in a single bubble. It's the perfect world for the Trickster: all the chaos that could ever have happened for him to feed on."
"But you will stop him," chuckled the Master as he slowly stood up. "You have a plan, Doctor. You've been working on it since the moment you saw the psychograft. What is your plan? How are you gonna save the universe this time?"
"There's a link," the Doctor sauntered over to him, "between our bubble of existence and the rest of the universe within the limbo dimensions. And that link," he began sonicking the Master, "is on your back."
"The time beetle?"
"In order to sustain its version of reality where you, as Jack, killed Jack and thus created the paradox, the beetle has to exist across every moment of Jack's life. Now that time has been compressed into limbo, all of those moments are one and that one is connected to our bubble. If I transfer my consciousness into the time beetle here, I will be in both places."
"And then what will you do?"
"Don't know. I haven't gotten to that part yet. It's a thing in progress."
"A thing in progress?"
"Respect the thing!"
"This is never gonna work."
"Oh," the Doctor smiled, "but it will work. And d'you know why? Silence will fall when the question is asked. I know what that means now. Silence will fall because the question won't be asked of me. I'll be a beetle."
"What-?" was all the Master could manage to say before the Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver at the activation matrix of the psychograft and his viewpoint suddenly shifted.
The Master looked down at this hand. He was holding the sonic screwdriver. He looked up and there were two Jacks staring at him. Immediately, he reached with his other hand to the space above his head and, to his delight, found a fez.
"Fezzes are cool," he remarked.