DOCTOR WHO: RISE OF THE SMILERS
Chapter 8
Clunk by clunk, the Smiler hub strode across the stone floor of the government building as Liz managed to roar it into life. It was a lot of guess work on her part but she was really enjoying it. It was one of the few times she'd smiled of late with the Smiler revolution taking place and colleague after colleague dying. Dennis and Helen were trying to keep up with Liz but were struggling.
"Please keep in contact with us throughout…" Dennis shouted to Liz. "There's a communicator in the hub."
"Not another communicator…" laughed Liz. "One for Rory and the Doctor and one for you two, I'm communicated to the limit!" she added as the hub lurched forward to one side before its pace began to pick up.
"Ma'am…" called out Helen. "Good luck!" she added as the only hope for the nation sped off into the distance.
"Come on Amy!" worried Rory as the search for his Smiler-like wife continued. He'd been searching for what seemed like an eternity and he was getting nowhere further. The stress of the day was severely getting to him as a headache pounded across his forehead. He got headaches often while travelling on the TARDIS but this one was just different, something was severely different about it. "Ahh…" Rory moaned. "What's doing this?"
"A trick of the mind…" rasped a female voice from inside Rory's head.
"Who's there? What are you doing?" asked Rory as all around him the panic of the Smiler revolution continued.
"I'm making you think of the dangers you see all around you, not just now but always…" the voice continued. "That man, the clever one knows that at any moment you could die. In fact you actually did earlier on."
"Ruth? Is it you?" Rory then asked nervously. He simply couldn't be sure as the headache progressively got worse and worse by the moment. He was starting to keel over in the pain as the voice just kept on taunting and taunting him. They laughed as Rory just fell to the floor and held his hands against his head. Rory felt as if his hair was slowly falling out although it wasn't as the taunts carried on.
"No-one needs you; you're only a spare part. You serve no purpose…" the voice continued as Rory just screamed and shouted in agony. Suddenly, a Smiler turned round and saw Rory writhing in pain.
"R…r….Rory…" they eventually said as the Smiler turned out to be the Amy Smiler. She rushed over as quickly as she could to her husband's side and tried to pick him up but Rory pushed her away as the pain continued inside his head. He didn't know it was Amy as the pain just ruled every part of him.
"You're worthless….you add nothing to this world…" the voice taunted even more as Rory clinched at his hair.
"STOP IT!" he cried. "Stop it please…" he added on the point of tears. Amy just looked on and then raised one of her Smiler arms into the sky and fired shot after shot to silence all around her. All did fall silent and Amy slowly picked up Rory and just looked at him like she did on their wedding day. Even though she was mostly Smiler now, her smile, Amy's unique smile shone through. The voice that had been tormenting Rory just looked on from afar.
"I think that's enough Ruth…" then called the Doctor's voice from behind the figure.
"Why ever not?" she asked as she turned round. "Killing is fun…"
"He's a friend of mine, one of the best I have…" the Doctor said simply.
"Am I meant to stop because of that?" Ruth retorted. "If that is the case sir, you won't have a chance of stopping me."
"I'm the Doctor, not sir, although I did become Sir Doctor at some point, but I digress…" the Doctor smiled. "You've got control of these Smilers, Smilers that were and still are people. That's my friend over there with my other friend. She's been made into a Smiler and there isn't much left of her."
"And?" Ruth asked sarcastically. "Am I meant to feel sorry for you?"
"No…" the Doctor said simply as he walked closer to Ruth. "I expect you to stop this. Your controller has a certain frequency that can reverse this process that you've done and it will be something truly magical if you could do that Ruth…"
"I'll gain nothing though…I'm here to rule and put across my society on the people." Ruth remarked. "Imperfect people might aswell be Smilers for all I care…"
"You won't appreciate me doing this then…" the Doctor said as he pointed his sonic screwdriver at Ruth's controller. He looked her closely in the eyes but their dark brown hue gave nothing away and she remained an utter mystery. The sonic buzzed loudly and the controller fizzed and crackled but nothing happened down on the streets as Amy held Rory and protected him from any further attacks.
"Oh dear…" Ruth smiled. "A sonic device can't damage my wonderful controller."
"How have you done all of this exactly, Ruth? Smilers are androids…they can't just simply absorb a human within them." the Doctor then remarked to agitate Ruth even more.
"The previous administration left old relics and parts from a closed down and disused Smiler factory. The files were still there and I came across them when I sheltered in the building." Ruth began. "I loved the designs and the capabilities that the owners had devised. It fitted in with my ideology for society. We fitted just like a glove."
"But how does it work?" the Doctor inquired.
"It's a simple biometric server analysis impulse that activates to full use when a Smiler is angry. With that, a power store within its inside begins to erupt and envelope whatever is around it." Ruth explained. "They move to their surroundings to grasp the human. The dust or ash as many seem to believe it to be is a remnant of the power store. It's quite handy in making it seem like everyone is dead though. To get the Smilers into this state though is just a simple engineering lesson. Out go its old command prompts and in goes the power store along with new prompts to rid society of the imperfect."
"Very clever if I must say so, Ruth…" the Doctor complimented.
"I don't want compliments sir. I just strive for my world in my way. No sonic device can stop it, not ever…" Ruth smiled with an evil glare.
"No, that's true…." then called a distance voice. "…but a Smiler hub can stop you!" the voice added as the Doctor turned around in shock to see Liz marching on inside an odd contraption. Ruth just looked on in equal shock as she knew what was about to happen.
"Your Majesty…don't be daft…" she said worriedly. "Those things are banned…"
"A threat to the crown is a punishable offence Ms Rathbourne and if I'm really honest, you've gone too far…" Liz said threateningly. "A member of the civilian charge only two weeks ago and here you are at the source of it all. You did that to gain information from us all didn't you? It was you that killed my colleagues." she then accused as Ruth just began to panic more and more. Her plan began to unravel before her eyes and soon she reached for a gun inside her long flowing black coat. She pointed it immediately at the Doctor but Rory, who'd now recovered from Ruth-infused headache, charged over and punched Ruth right across her face. She slammed loudly onto the ground.
"Where would you be without me?" Rory jokingly asked as he and the Doctor held Ruth back.
"Let go of me!" Ruth protested as she wriggled endlessly.
"Oh no…" said the Doctor. "That would be kind…and were not…"
The triumphant team soon walked back with Ruth in a firm hold from the Doctor and Rory as they knew the upheaval was in its last moments. As they descended upon the government building, the Cordale's looked on in sheer shock.
"My god…" said Dennis as he and Helen looked on in awe of the majestic entry of the victors. Ruth looked incredibly panic stricken and glum in the same moment as she knew her Bonsarviss ideology was now just a distant idea.
"Everyone…" declared Liz grandly. "…this is the woman punishable for offences against the people of Bonsarviss. She will pay the consequence of her crimes…"
"Can I just apologise ma'am?" Ruth asked pathetically to her queen.
"No…" Liz replied sternly.
"I understand…" Ruth conceded. "…I'd just like to know where Malcolm is…"
"What did you do him exactly?" Rory asked as he and the Doctor set her aside with guards monitoring her every move.
"She'd half-converted him into a Smiler…" said the Doctor angrily. "He was no-one before all of this was he? You just took a random man from the streets, an elderly man and implanted your ideology onto him before converting him into a Smiler against his will…"
"It was all I could do…" Ruth retorted. "…I couldn't risk sacrificing myself at such an early stage of the plan. I'd developed this control system over the Smilers for some time but I needed someone to be the face of the coup, and obviously it couldn't be me."
"It's not really got you anywhere though has it?" Rory smiled as in the distance footsteps that grew louder and louder grew closer and closer. Everyone began to wonder who or what it was and then suddenly Malcolm, now more Smiler-like than ever before stood in front of everyone. His head creaked and cranked slowly to reveal a face of disapproval.
"You made me imperfect…" he said solemnly to Ruth. "You are imperfect too for making these rulings…"
"Malcolm…" said Ruth emotionally. "I'm sorry for what I did to you but it needed to be done. Society here was wrong, we needed to do good. You would have been my second in command without any hesitation if it had gone to plan. This needed to be done."
"It didn't…" Malcolm replied angrily as a gun protruded from his forehead. It aimed directly at Ruth and before anyone could begin to react it fired right at her. No-one could do a thing as within one moment Ruth was there and then in the next she wasn't. Her scream was the last thing heard of her and the controller she'd used for all her Smilers dropped to the ground with a thud. Malcolm just seemingly froze still as guards hurried around him. He looked as if all the life in him had been sucked out as Ruth vanished into the ether.
"Oh my god…" Liz said as she put her hands to her head. "Doctor, what do we do now?"
"We have to guess…" he said simply as he picked up the controller off the floor and got out his sonic screwdriver. He smiled but it wasn't one of his normal reassuring smiles…
The Doctor frantically tried as many settings as possible on his screwdriver against the control that was formerly Ruth's but nothing was working. Liz joined his side and soon beckoned over Helen and Dennis too and still the four of them couldn't do a thing.
"Do something!" the Doctor shouted frustratedly to his screwdriver as it buzzed louder and louder. As Liz and the Cordale's looked on helplessly, Rory began to notice something was happening to Amy.
"Doctor!" he shouted. "She's coming back….she's turning back into Amy!" The Doctor looked over and just smiled. He kept his sonic firmly poised against the controller. As he did this, people came rushing in through the government building shouting at the top of their voices.
"Ma'am…the Smilers have stopped. The people's faces are slowly coming back!" one shouted.
"It's a miracle!" another added.
"Doctor keep on doing this, Bonsarviss will survive!" Liz smiled grandly but the Doctor noticed that the transformation back into human appeared to have peaked.
"Rory…" said Amy. "Am I back yet?"
"Almost…" Rory said as he held Amy's hands. They were no longer a Smiler's and slowly he could see his wife, his beautiful wife return but the process had slowed right down. "Doctor, what's happening?"
"The signal is fighting back…" the Doctor explained. "There needs to be a communal thought to override it and expose the human side within. Rory you need to let Amy know that. Liz, Dennis and Helen you head off to the broadcast post and relay that message. We can bring the Bonsarviss people back!"
"You are bloody brilliant you know?" Liz smiled as she and the Cordale's rushed off to the broadcast post. Rory meanwhile just held on tightly to Amy's hands and looked at her in her eyes, the eyes that were now hers and not a Smiler's.
"Amy, just believe you are a human again." he said passionately. "Think of us two, of Leadworth, your mum and dad, my mum and dad, Mels, Biggles the cat, Henry the fish that only lasted a couple of days, think of River and just most of all…"
"Think of you…" Amy smiled towards Rory as a pulsating green light reverberated all around. Slowly the mannequin face of the Smiler and body of its android-self shattered and vanished right before Rory and out of it appeared his wonderful and beautiful wife. She hugged him tightly and just jumped for joy. "Wahey!" she screamed. "I'm back!"
"Oh, I'd rather you didn't Pond…it was nice and quiet with you as a Smiler…me and Rory were really enjoying it!" joked the Doctor sarcastically. Amy just ignored his comments and slapped him on the shoulder before she kissed Rory as a thank you.
"What would I do without my boys?" Amy then laughed. Rory just smiled and was so glad to have Amy back. The Doctor was equally just as glad and just kept his sonic firmly poised on its setting as from above on the grand speaker systems of Bonsarviss all of them heard Liz, Dennis and Helen using their words of wisdom to bring the people back and to remove the Smilers once and for all. The signal kept reverberating across the streets of the planet as Smilers stood looking up listening to the message from their monarch. Deep down, they like Amy were still there somewhere inside the Smiler and they just thought of their lives, their wonderful and precious lives. Malcolm though looked on frozen as without Ruth, his Smiler thoughts saw no purpose in continuing his existence. He ignored the messages from above and just looked on, but he was in the minority as people high and low across Bonsarviss just thought and thought and thought of their humanity.
"Keep them going, keep them going…" the Doctor rallied as his screwdriver pulsated even further. A green wave of energy passed all over the planet and within moments, the mannequin faces cracked and splintered and out stepped the human refugees of Bonsarviss. Soon, the message came through and Liz and the Cordale's just broke into celebration.
"The people are back!" Liz shouted with unbelievable cheer into the microphone. "We've won it!" she added as back in the foyer, Malcolm suddenly crashed to the floor lifeless. He didn't want to return to life and would sooner give in and with that his pain was at an end. "We've won…" Liz smiled once more. "We've won…"