CHAPTER 2: Under Pressure
Air shifted around a vast, cavernous room as the TARDIS slowly materialised. It completed its transition with a hefty wheeze and a booming thud, and the Doctor wasted no time in opening the doors to step outside.
He surveyed his surroundings. A pristine, polished turquoise floor stretched in all directions, its surface reflected walls lined with massive stone columns that supported an arched ceiling framework of criss-crossed steel beams. Above, several security cameras twitched intermittently, their lenses pointed directly at the Doctor. He gave one a cheerful wave. Its presence, its overtly technological appearance, was at odds with the room's design; in fact, the architecture overall appeared to be a subtle jumble of design. A mix of old and new.
With each step he took, the Doctor's feet clacked in echo on the hard floor. The sound reverberated within the large space and stood out against the sheer lack of noise elsewhere. Behind him, Rory and Amy cautiously emerged from the TARDIS, their worried looks saying it all. "Where's this, then?" Amy asked.
The Doctor kept moving forward. He approached a lone desk set in the middle of the room, comically small against the large interior - and behind that desk sat a solitary humanoid figure. A young woman, whose attention was focused on a transparent computer monitor in front of her.
He stood before the woman, but she didn't register his presence. An awkward moment passed. The Doctor cleared his throat and rapped his knuckles on the desk, the noise positively booming within the empty space. Unfazed, she looked up, bored. She spoke in monotone. "Welcome to the Shadow Proclamation. Please be advised your presence here is monitored at all times. How can I help you?"
"Shadow Proclamation," said the Doctor. "Yes. Good. I like what you've done with the place. Nice columns. Negative space really brings life to a room."
He flashed a smile, but it wasn't returned. The woman simply stared at him with a blank, humourless expression. The Doctor's face gradually fell.
"Strictly business, then. Fine. I've come to see the Shadow Architect. She's expecting me, I believe."
The woman looked down at her monitor. "Name and species."
"The Doctor, one hundred percent Time Lord. And flanking me are the brand new Mister and Missus Williams, Amy and Rory, human and human."
The woman's expression immediately changed. She looked up at the Doctor, eyes wide and alert. Her hand slammed down hard on a red button embedded in the desk, and the room was filled with a piercing high-pitched alarm. Rory and Amy winced as they put their hands to their ears. The Doctor, himself on full alert, spun on his heel.
He spun to see a swarm of Judoon. They approached from all directions, two rows deep. The Judoon surrounded the desk, enclosing the Doctor, Amy, and Rory within their circle and stared at them down the sights of some heavy electronic firearms, all clicking into an armed state with one united motion. And there they stood, ready.
Amy tugged the Doctor's jacket sleeve. She tried to speak over the alarm. "Doctor..."
"Don't worry," he said. "This always happens. Well, I say always, but this is a new one for me, and normally I'm the king of always. No..."
He looked around. Judoon stood shoulder to shoulder. No way out.
"...this is a first."
"How about this? Is this a first, too?"
Sullen, with crossed arms, Rory addressed the Doctor. With Amy slumped beside him, all three sat on a grey concrete bench, confined by three equally grey concrete walls. In front of them was a laser grid, a mesh of red beams of light that served as a barrier. A prison.
"You mean holding cells in general?" said the Doctor. "Been there. But as for this particular cell…"
"It doesn't matter," said Rory. And that ended the conversation.
He got up from the bench, a deliberate move away from the Doctor, and stood at the light bars. He angled his head to try and peer down the dingy hallway before him, to see if he could attract someone's attention. Rory called out into the darkness. "Hello? Anyone there? Anyone with the faintest idea of what's going on? Anyone who can tell me why I'm spending my honeymoon in prison?"
With those two words, said in heavy emphasis, Rory turned to the Doctor and stared right into his eyes. The Doctor refused to play his game, and instead devoted his attention to a crease in the concrete ceiling.
Amy stood and started pacing the cell. "Doctor, I've got to say, this isn't how I pictured it either. What's the story? Why are we here?"
Again, no response. His focus was elsewhere.
Amy huffed and joined Rory at the laser grid. They both looked out, helpless. Rory kept his gaze straight ahead.
"Think he's got a plan?" he said.
"He's the Doctor, of course he's got a plan." Amy allowed herself a faint smirk. "Other times he just does stuff and somehow it all works out."
Rory turned to face Amy. "Why did you do it? When you went with him by yourself, just you and him. You left in the night to escape with a man who could show you the stars. But there's more to it than that, isn't there? You go willingly with someone, you need to trust them - and you trusted him right from the start." He paused to ask her again. "Why?"
Amy sighed. "I don't know. Honestly, I don't know. Even then, but especially now. That man, he just gets in your head. He charms his way forth. He sells you the big promise without telling you how he's going to deliver it. But somehow that's part of the allure. Yeah, things have gone wrong. They go wrong more often than not. And yet... you look back and you realise they would have gone worse if it wasn't for him. Or more to the point, you realise they couldn't have gone any other way."
"But why risk it at all? You know it's dangerous - why throw yourself at it?"
"Wouldn't you?"
Rory paused. He turned to look back through the red lasers. "Yeah. I would."
A moment lingered between them. Rory pushed a smile as he attempted to lighten the mood. "I suppose if things got too hairy, you could always go back in time to prevent it."
Amy smiled with him. "Not according to Mr Timey Wimey. Something about not interfering with your own time stream. I don't know. Laws of the universe."
"I guess messing with the past creates more trouble. Like the whole grandfather paradox thing."
The Doctor looked around. "The what?"
Rory and Amy turned to face him; clearly, they'd managed to get his attention. "You know, the grandfather paradox," said Rory. "How you can't go back in time and kill your grandfather, because then you'd never be born so you can't go back in time and kill your... didn't you ever watch 'The Twilight Zone'?"
"I don't care for reality television," said the Doctor, with a dismissive wave of his hand. "And besides, it's totally wrong. You can."
"You can what?"
"Go back and time and kill your grandfather."
Amy and Rory stared at the Doctor with open mouths. "But how?"
He pointed a finger in the air. "Well, disclaimers. Technically it counts on you overcoming the torrent of roadblocks that will naturally occur between you and your end goal. It's not easy; there's an infinite number of things that could prevent you from getting within spitting distance of meddling with the past. You want to kill your grandfather, but how do you know you won't be hit by a car as you cross the street? Or get distracted by a pretty girl? Or choke on the hamburger you have for lunch? How do you know your gun won't jam, or you won't be tackled to the ground by a bystander the moment you take it out of your pocket? You're one human up against limitless chance. Your odds never get better than microscopic."
"Okay," said Rory, "but suppose they did..."
"Suppose they did. Suppose you stared chance in the eye and told it to push off, and you somehow managed to wade through the odds to find yourself pointing a gun at your grandfather in the past. And let's entertain the notion that the gun fires, and the bullet hits him square in the chest, and he dies. You've done it. But you haven't changed anything."
"What do you mean?" said Amy. "Of course you have."
"You haven't changed. You've created."
A confused silence hung between the group. "I don't understand," said Rory.
The Doctor sighed. "You humans never do. Remember: time isn't a line of A to B to C. If something happens to A, it doesn't mean you've prevented C. Wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey compensates for the change. It splits it off like a branch on a tree. The consequences get diverted out of that event and into a whole new reality, running parallel to the old one from the point of difference. It happens billions of times a day, every day, since before time began, at every crossroad of decision. Any point where one choice is made over another. You don't talk to the pretty girl or you do. You choose sunny side up instead of over easy. You turn left instead of right. Just as every action has a reaction, every decision has a universe that hosts its consequences. Every time something could have been, there's a universe in which... it... is."
"I still don't understand," said Rory. "If I've gone back in time and killed my grandfather, why would I still be alive?"
"Because he's not your grandfather. Don't you see? The man you killed is in a universe where he never met your grandmother, or never had any children, or became a monk, or any number of things. He's not your grandfather - he's just some guy. You killing him created a universe where he has no relation to you. You pull the trigger, and the change becomes just another 'what if' possibility on an infinite spectrum. That's the thing that people don't understand about time: you're not severing a link in the past, you're creating an altogether new chain."
"So... he's from a universe that was created before my actions needed to create it?"
"Now you're getting it! Wibbly-wobbly!"
Amy scratched her head. "And that's why paradoxes don't occur? Because a time-altering event creates a parallel universe?"
"Exactly! It doesn't conflict with what has been, but creates a reality that hosts what could have been."
"So how come your kind's all about preventing paradoxes? Normally you're going on about how they'll break time, but now you're saying they won't?"
The Doctor furrowed his brow. "But... they will..." He looked pained, as though he was chipping through to an encased memory, trying to reach a tip-of-the-tongue moment. As though the answer was so close, but so far out of reach. "They won't... why won't they... why didn't I..." He gripped Amy on the shoulders, forcing her to look right at him. "Paradoxes are real. There are laws against that sort of… or at least there were. But parallel universes are real. What about them? What about Rose?"
"Who's Rose?"
"It's like… it's like there's two different sets of knowledge in my head. Like I'm looking in two different directions at the same time. Both views are correct." He paused. "Aren't they?"
A new voice spoke. "You tell me."
The three turned towards the source. Beyond the laser grid stared an old woman with wiry white hair and gaunt features that showed the bones through her stretched skin. Fiery red eyes glared with focused intent. Strict. Authoritative.
Rory looked at her. "Who are you?"
"You may call me the Shadow Architect." She stared at the Doctor and pursed her lips. "And you may stop calling me 'Your Majesty'."
"Well, what would you prefer?" the Doctor said, shelving his previous confusion in place of a cocksure air. "Grand Poobah? Sweet cheeks? Darling?"
"Doctor..."
"Snugglecakes?"
"Doctor! I must ask for your full attention."
"Yeah, well, you've got it, but it's all been pretty ham-fisted if you want the honest verdict. I mean, throwing out a clump of hooks that don't match up, just to get me interested enough in a house call?"
She tilted her head. "Hooks?"
"Hooks. Dangling teases of nonsensical nibbly tidbits. It's B.C. over here, it's A.D. over there, and in the middle there's a man with a time machine. The Orient Express in space? Before you tell me the one about the talking dinosaurs, tell me how long you honestly thought it would take for me to see through such a ridiculous ploy. Because as far as I'm concerned, this is a new personal best."
The Shadow Architect looked indignant. "I'm unsure why knowledge of the Space Express escapes you. It's very real, and has been for centuries. Admittedly, the escaped princess is less so - she remains safe in her obelisk. But it doesn't matter, you're here all the same. And with a second helping? Doctor, that's double the punishment."
The Doctor grimaced. "Look, enough with the games," he said, frustrated. "Why bring me here? Why did you need my attention?"
"To discuss an anomaly."
The Doctor fell silent. His hearts stopped in his chest. He nodded slowly. "Ah."
"So you know about it?"
He tried to swallow, but his throat felt uncomfortably tight. "TARDIS picked it up," he said, his voice barely a whisper.
"So you know why we needed you to come here."
The Doctor said nothing.
"I had hoped to raise this with you with more tact than this," said the Shadow Architect. "Despite the subterfuge, you're deserving of something significantly less crass. But now you see why it was necessary. We wanted you because we wanted them."
And she pointed. Right at Rory and Amy.
The Doctor's alarm overwrote his confusion. Was the Shadow Architect not talking about him? Was he not the anomaly? What was going on?
"You want them?" the Doctor said. He controlled his voice in an effort to maintain a front of composure. "What for? They've done nothing."
The Shadow Architect raised her eyebrows. "They've done everything. They're humans, Doctor."
"And they have been all their lives. So what?"
"Don't give me that. You harbouring two humans on board your ship means you're just as responsible as they are."
Anger filtered into the Doctor's tone. "What have you got against humans?"
"They've been extinct for thousands of years."
He was taken aback. The Doctor looked at the Shadow Architect. "Extinct?"
"You should know, Doctor. You were there. You saw it happen. In the human year of 1981, a Fashtren genetic resonator killed every last one."
The Doctor stepped away from the light bars in disbelief. His mind reeled at super speed. "But that's..." His memories peeled back to that moment as he saw the events unfold in his mind's eye. The resonator. The ship. The explosion. He replayed the scenario, again and again, to assure himself of the truth. "We stopped them. Miranda stopped them."
A lone figure advanced through the darkness. "I wish I-I did."
It was a female voice, meek and gentle. The owner was shrouded in a thin black robe, the hood flowing over a bowed head as its length brushed along the floor with each dainty step. "Every day, I wish I did. There's not a moment that goes-goes by where I don't wish I could do it differently. That I made a different choice. But instead, I have-have to live with that burden. The death of an entire race."
She lifted her head to look into the cell. "Hello, Doctor."
Long, blonde hair. Wide blue eyes. Perfect complexion.
"Miranda..."
Rory turned to the Doctor. "Sorry, you two know each other?"
"She... saved humanity. She sacrificed herself." He looked at the woman, studied her every feature. Looked for some sort of giveaway, a clue, that explained her presence. "How are you here? Amy and I, we watched you die."
"A failure as a field agent," said the Shadow Architect, her tone stern enough to melt steel, and Miranda bowed her head in response. "Project Miranda was developed at great cost to the Proclamation, but ultimately to no avail. Her primary function was not realised. Humanity was lost."
"That's not what happened," said the Doctor. "Miranda, you know that's not what happened."
Her head remained lowered. "I killed them-them all."
"Despite her failure," said the Shadow Architect, "we decided against decommission. Instead, we reallocated Miranda's skills elsewhere within the Proclamation. Cluster analysis was deemed the most appropriate fit."
Miranda appeared to bristle at this, but said nothing.
"Cluster analysis?" said the Doctor.
"Bioscanning universe quadrants for any and all lifeforms, so we might keep an eye on who's where. We assigned Miranda to low traffic areas. And she found something." The Shadow Architect looked directly at Amy. "She found you."
Amy looked aghast. "Doctor," she said. "What's she talking about?"
"That's what I'd like to know," he said, staring at the Shadow Architect. "You detect a human lifeform, you get it brought to your doorstep… all for what, exactly?"
"Oh Doctor," sighed the Shadow Architect. "You really don't understand what she means? What both of them mean?"
"Understand what?"
The Shadow Architect looked at him for a moment, then produced a small datapad from her pocket. She passed it through the light bars to the Doctor; he accepted it and examined its display. His eyes scanned the information, then froze. He read it again.
"This is impossible."
"I assure you it's not."
"But it's impossible."
"Our best Shadow teams have analysed the data for months."
"Then analyse it again." The Doctor's neck muscles tensed. "Tell your teams to brush up on their laws of basic physics. This simply cannot happen as a matter of scientific fact."
"We know." And the look on the Shadow Architect's face said it all: we're just as thrown by this as you are.
The Doctor took a moment to read her expression. He sensed what it reflected, and its weight appeared to press upon him from above; his shoulders visibly slumped as he grappled with the ramifications. The Shadow Architect noticed, and attempted some measure of sympathy.
"You can't deny the evidence," she said.
"No," he said. "I don't suppose I can."
Amy stepped forward. "And for those of us who have no idea of what's going on, would someone care to enlighten us?"
The Doctor attempted to shake off his daze as he searched for the right words. "Think of the universe," he said. "One big massive universe, with all its stars and planets and cosmic dust. Now put it on a scale. Measure its weight."
"Okay…"
He tapped the datapad. "The universe's weight is wrong."
"What?"
"It's wrong. It's not what it should be. In fact, it's heavier. The universe has more... stuff. A lot more stuff.
"Two humans," said the Shadow Architect. "Alive when there should be none. That's more than enough. Look at the data. Look at the added pressure they're putting on space and time. Doctor, you know as well as I do what that means. You know what needs to be done."
The Doctor's lips went dry.
The Shadow Architect looked at Amy. "You died in the resonator. And you—" she looked at Rory "—you died as a result. You all did. Yet here you are. Humans in a universe where there are none."
"So..." Amy ventured. "You want us to… repopulate the species?"
A blank stare. "No."
Rory shuffled his feet.
"The Shadow Proclamation failed to save humanity. But with you two alive, there's a far greater threat that's pressing upon the fabric of space and time itself. You two are an anomaly. The catalysts of a universe imbalance, sending our entire plane of existence into a terminal velocity. And with each passing moment, the weight is increasing - the Doctor can tell you that. It's spiralling into implosion. Which means, in order to relieve the pressure, we must eliminate the catalyst."
Amy went pale. "What?"
"You two. You two must die."
CHAPTER THREE COMING SOON!