THIS CHAPTER INVOKES A THIRD DOCTOR STORY FROM THE 70'S CALLED THE THREE DOCTORS.
EIGHT
"Did you find out anything?" asked Jack, as they began to climb the stairs together.
"I checked the TARDIS for unauthorised interfacing, because I thought..."
Jack waited. "You thought?"
The Doctor stopped in the middle of a set of stairs. He stared at Jack contemplatively. He took a breath. "There's this thing... this secret that only I, Martha and the TARDIS know about. And it's starting to crop up in her visions."
"Uh, it is?"
"Yes. I can see it because I know about it. You don't recognise it because it's totally foreign to you. But trust me, it's there, loud and clear. And I think it's part of what's causing her agony. I checked the TARDIS for interfacing because I thought that someone must have hacked in, found out the secret and then used it to torture Martha."
"Doctor, what the hell is this?" Jack asked sternly, exasperatedly. He was flying relatively blind trying to help Francine and her family, and now he was starting to get royally pissed off that the Doctor would tell him nothing.
The Doctor sighed again. "I can't tell you right now Jack. That's for Martha herself to do, if she wishes. But will you please let me finish?"
"Fine, finish." The two men continued their loud tromping trek up the stairs.
"What I discovered was that it wasn't some random alien that did this to Martha. It was the TARDIS!"
"What?" Jack cried out, stopping dead again, this time at the top of a set of stairs.
"It was the TARDIS. It was a malfunction – totally an accident."
Jack gaped for a few moments. "Holy crap," were the words that finally came out.
"Yeah."
"How is that even possible?"
They continued to climb.
"Well... years and years and years ago, there was this bloke called Omega. A Time Lord, very powerful, very talented, very well-respected. A major drama freak, but that's neither here nor there. But while he was trying to find energy for us to travel through time, he caused a supernova to explode and it swallowed him up and accidentally turned him into anti-matter. He existed for a while in an anti-matter universe."
"Okay," Jack said, giving the Doctor a strange look and attempting to open his hotel room door.
"Because he had been matter, and now by some fluke had become anti-matter, it brought out a sort of alter-ego. He called it The Dark Side of My Mind," the Doctor told Jack, imitating Omega's voice as he related this last bit. "And it was tangible when called forth, even as Omega himself became less and less tangible. When I came face-to-face with Omega, he demanded that I have a punch-up with The Dark Side of His Mind, so I did. I actually had a fist-fight with an aspect of his consciousness."
"What?" Jack asked, ushering the Doctor inside, and switching on the light. The two men stood just inside the door, talking. Well, one was talking, the other was trying his best to keep up.
"I know, mad, eh? Anyway, what the Time Lords discovered eventually was that all Time Lords, and indeed the TARDISes who love them, have that side. It's literally the opposite of everything the Time Lord is, and in situations where the outer ego is unable to perform, shall we say, then the Dark Side becomes tangible and viable," the Doctor explained. "This is why it's not good for Time Lords to stew in their own juices for too long."
"So, let me get this straight," Jack said, steadying himself against the wall. "Something caused the TARDIS to malfunction, it zeroed in on Martha, and brought forth the Doctor from Bizarro world."
"No! The TARDIS' outer ego, its good side, was expended somehow, which brought out the Dark Side of the TARDIS. It zeroed in on Martha because she is part of its consciousness now, and it was looking for its other half, for solace, for something good. It attacked her, for lack of a better word, healed itself, and left a huge rip in her mind. The imprint of its own Dark Side, I suppose, is what's in her now."
"So how do we reverse it? Can't we just have the TARDIS do the same thing to her again, only this time with the good side?"
"No, no, no," the Doctor said emphatically. "Remember when Rose absorbed the time vortex? Well, we run the risk of that happening to Martha if we attempted something like that. No, I've got to find another way. I just haven't worked that bit out yet."
"Whoa," Jack sighed, sinking further into the wall. He contemplated for a few seconds. Then he asked, "But why didn't it attack you? Seems like you'd be the logical choice for its other half."
"I don't know," the Doctor said, genuinely confused. "I must have been asleep or away or something. I do spend lots of time away from the TARDIS you know."
"Okay, but this still doesn't explain the Bizarro Doctor in Martha's visions," said Jack. "If it's not the Dark Side of your Time Lord mind that's run amok in there, then why the hell does she think you're a sadistic monster?"
The Doctor sighed again. "I'm afraid it wouldn't be sporting if I told you."
"The secret?"
"The secret."
"What if I told you I might know the secret?"
"I would ask you to tell me what you know."
"I can do better than that. I can show you."
The Doctor's eyebrows went up. "You can show me?"
"Well, I can't show you exactly, but I can show you the nightmare version."
"Please explain."
"As I was walking back here, I had a brilliant thought," Jack told the Doctor as he finally properly entered the room and tossed his coat onto the desk.
"I'll let lie there the comment about how unlikely that is, and skip straight to asking what it was."
"Sit down," Jack commanded, gesturing toward the bed.
The Doctor sat down, and Jack pulled up a chair facing him. He hauled the briefcase out from under the nightstand and began to fit the parts together.
"Hunh," the Doctor commented on the apparatus. "You stole that? You know that that would be punishable by death in the Nevolish galaxy?"
"Well, there's one more reason not to go back there, then," Captain Jack answered with a crooked smile. The last click fell into place, and he said, "I'm going to put the receiver on you."
"Okay," the Doctor said, uncomfortably letting Jack fit him with goggles and ear pieces.
"I will transmit as we listen to the tape. I'll try to recall visually what I saw in Martha's mind, and link it up to you. I want you to see, Doctor."
The Doctor practically growled the words, "Well, here we go, then."
