Hello all!

In the previous chapter, Donna learned that the "Heimat Squad" and the Time Lords began work a while back, creating "an oxbow in time" so as to contain the human race on a seventy-year cycle, between 1938 and 2008, forever. They'd deemed post-WWII humanity too dangerous to exist unchecked, and this was their solution. Although, as we know, the Time Lords are out of the picture now... except for one.

But when that "one" finds out what they're actually planning, he's not pleased. And in this chapter, he's going to bring up a consequence of this operation that it seems no-one had considered, which makes the whole thing so much more dire!

Enjoy!

TWENTY

The room was large, but not so large that he couldn't tell who was standing on the other end of it.

A few hours after he'd got off the phone with Martha, the Doctor had been led here by an apologetic Agent Pym, and now he found himself standing opposite General Kir, and the ever-popular Buford S. Greene.

Truth be told, he was quite surprised to see the latter.

"Mr. Greene," the Doctor said, genially, walking forward. "Fancy seeing you here!"

"Good evening, Doctor," said Mr. Greene. "Been having a pleasant stay, in the Inner Sanctum?"

"Actually… it's not bad. The Galactic Council has been sticking to the letter of the law, so I'm guaranteed not too much discomfort."

"Speaking of comfort," General Kir said, in his affable way, looking the Doctor, and his blue suit, up and down. "Nice duds. Where did they come from?"

"Oh, erm, I found them down in Lost Property," Agent Pym said, a bit too emphatically. Clearly, he was trying to keep General Kir from knowing anything about the Doctor's visit with Martha.

"Lost Property?" Kir asked. "Do we even have that?"

"Yes, sir," Pym answered.

"So… hello again, Doctor," Kir said with a slight bow, turning his attention to the Time Lord. "I guess you've already met Mr. Greene."

"Indeed," said the Doctor. "Though, I'd be very interested to know his real name."

General Kir laughed. "Very rich, Doctor. Mr. Greene was just telling me how interested he'd be to hear your real name."

The Doctor smirked. "Trust me, I don't think he'd enjoy the conditions of having that bit of knowledge. Or, I dunno, maybe he would. Who am I to say?"

"Buford S. Greene is my real name, Doctor," said the PR man. "It is the name my mother and father gave me."

"And when would that have been?" the Doctor wondered.

"16 January, 1896," said Greene. "In 1938, I turned 42 years old."

"And you were frozen there," the Doctor surmised.

"In a manner of speaking," the other man said lightly.

"Why?"

"Why, indeed?" Greene said to him, enigmatically.

"All in good time, gentlemen," General Kir cut in rather loudly. "First, we must take care of some business. Doctor, do you know what room you're in?"

The Doctor looked about, and realized very quickly what the room's function was, and what he'd been brought here to do.

The room was roundish, well-lit, and about the size of the TARDIS console room, except its control panels were along the walls. There was a long board of dials, displays, keypads and the like on his left, and in front of him, behind where Greene and Kir were standing, there were two closed doors. On the right, there was a completely different control panel, that seemed less intricate, but only on the outside. The Doctor knew that the function of this panel was infinitely more complex, even if it didn't have as many moving parts.

At left, the controls were used for setting coordinates for time and space, and were similar to the ones on his TARDIS console that let him decide (sort of) where and when he was going. On the right, he recognised a veritable toolbox of manipulation devices, and he realized that this whole affair just got a hell of a lot more complicated.

From the evidence, he could guess what was behind the two doors. He had been trained at the Academy in a room very much like this one… only, frankly, more elaborate. And that room had been very much like this one because his people had built them both.

"Yeah," he growled, still looking about. "I get it."

"So you understand why you're here," Kir assumed.

"I do. I'm here because this room contains a whole mess of switches and toggles and knobs and bobs that manipulate time. On that side," he said, gesturing left. "One can indicate the extent of the time-block that one might like to isolate, say, for a wild, totally-out-of-thin-air example, first January to thirty-first December, 1938. One can also calibrate the block to select only certain spaces in the universe, for instance, planet Earth. In addition, one can specify the length and breadth of a time loop, even its speed, level of stability, consistency, and duration.

"On the right, one can use the myriad different mechanisms, bunch of crazy intuitive tools to wield and wrangle the vortex, and employ any one of a dozen methods for isolating that block of time, in the way that one might choose. Which means…"

The Doctor moved forward to try and walk between Greene and Kir.

"What're you doing?" Kir asked, stopping him with one beefy arm.

"I'm opening these doors," the Doctor said, indicating what was behind the General.

"I'm sorry, you can't do that."

The Doctor laughed, and shouted, "Oh, come on, General!" but he backed off. "Given that you've got a coordinates panel and a manipulation panel, it only stands to reason that you'd have moderately tempered schisms behind these doors! Two gateways into the depths of the time vortex. Without that, all of this equipment is useless!"

The General and the PR man said nothing.

"And gentlemen, I'm here," the Doctor said, with a profound, breathy voice that commanded attention. "Because you have this incredible, universe-altering equipment, and no idea how to use any of it."

"That's true," Kir conceded.

"The Time Lords set 'em up, but then they went extinct before you lot had a chance to knock 'em down. Pity, that."

"Indeed," Kir now muttered.

"My guess is that you've been reading how-to manuals for the past seventy years, but with the Time Lords gone, and confined to a timelock, there's been no-one to make it go, no matter how well-versed you get in the theory of how it all works. The devices, for the most part, require a perspective over time and space that you simply don't possess."

"Right," Kir conceded, tedium colouring his voice. "Which is why we need your expertise, so that Mr. Greene can learn the ropes. He needs to know how to isolate 1938 again, so that we can run the time loop at high velocity, as many times as it takes."

"As many times as it takes to… beat out the wrinkles, yeah?" asked the Doctor, remembering the General's original, bogus story about why they needed his help.

"Exactly."

"And this is why Mr. Greene has been taken out of time, out of the ageing process," the Doctor realised. "Eternally to remain 42 years old. He'll retain memories forever, on each loop, so that if I teach it to him today, he'll remember it again in seventy years when it comes time to re-up. And he'll remember it again in one-hundred-forty years, and two-hundred-ten years, et cetera, et cetera."

"And I understand that it might take a staff, as it were, and I have them under contract, ready to go. I am the leader of this special project from that end, Doctor. I am the Eternity Agent," Buford S. Greene said proudly.

The Doctor smiled. "Mr. Greene, bravo. That is the most eloquent euphemism I've ever heard, for someone who has sold out their own planet in exchange for eternal life."

Greene fell silent, and his face fell as he realised that the Doctor's comment was not complimentary.

"Wanting to live forever, I get that," the Doctor said, hands in pockets, now pacing around a bit. "I mean, eternal life is misguided and fraught with turmoil and problems that can't be foreseen by anyone – well, except for a select few – but I understand the desire for it. Death is right scary, and uncertainty is even scarier, even for me."

"I'm glad you see it my way," Greene said to him with malice in his voice.

"What I don't get," said the Doctor, winding up to land a blow on the heads of his adversaries. "Is how any human being could agree to bring about the apocalypse of his own world, his own people, and still live with himself. Live with himself forever and ever, actually."

There was a stunning, still, weighty silence, and the Doctor knew he'd shocked the pants off them.

"Apocalypse?" Greene asked, trying to recover from the silence.

"Well, a figurative apocalypse in one sense. A slightly more literal one, in a different sense," the Doctor said, taking a deep breath, and letting it out through pursed lips. "And it's a weighty thing, Buford, my friend. I mean, I destroyed my planet and I go on, but I'm a Time Lord. We live with battle scars and shrapnel in our minds that bring humans to their knees, and rightly so – humans are overwhelmingly innately good and sensitive and full of hope. Time Lords, well, they're grave and morbid and stodgy, with a disturbingly huge capacity for longevity, and absorbing catastrophe, as it turns out. But you're human, Mr. Greene! This has got to be unbearably heavy upon your soul. Unless… sorry, do you still have a soul?"

"Excuse me, Doctor, what are you on about? What's this apocalypse?" asked the General, laughing, but with totally fake mirth.

"Well, it's not exactly the four horsemen, but basically the human race and planet Earth cease to exist sometime around midday on Wednesday, which is less than two days from now, because time will reset at 1938, and run its course over the next seventy years. And once it does, most of the planet will be, as they say, hell on Earth. And it will reset again and again ad infinitum."

"Not ad infinitum, Doctor, just a mathematically-determined number of cycles," Kir began, a bit weakly. "I've already told you, there are time pockets, lumps and hiccups all over the continuum between…"

"Oh, don't give me that smoothing-out-the-time-pocket rubbish," the Doctor spat. His voice dropped an octave, and took on a mocking tone. "The cake batter is lumpy between World War II and today, so you need me to turn the electric mixer on, at its highest setting, to knead out the kinks."

"But that's what we're doing."

The Doctor shouted now. "Don't insult my intelligence! Blimey, even you don't sound like you believe any of it! I'm a Time Lord, for God's sake. Have you got any idea what that means? Course not. If you did, you wouldn't be wasting my time with any of this!" He paused, paced, then stopped in front of Buford S. Greene, and shook his head in disgust. His voice became eerie and muted. "Thanks to you, humanity never advances beyond July of 2008. And you, Mr. Greene… well, you must have friends, family, descendants who will be impacted. What do you say to yourself when you look in the mirror each day?"

Greene swallowed hard. "I never married, never had children. There are no descendants."

"Oh, well, as long as you don't have any descendants, then why worry, eh? Fine, fine, carry on, then, Mr. Greene."

Greene said nothing.

There was a long pause in the room. Then, the General tried again. "Doctor, this is all really far-fetched. We don't know who's been feeding you this information, but…"

"That would be your Eternity Agent, there, General," the Doctor said. "He and his little firm."

"Excuse me?" Greene asked, offended.

"I've got eyes and ears everywhere," the Doctor whispered.

"I swept the building for surveillance!"

"Oh really? I thought you two didn't know what I was talking about, eh?" the Doctor pointed out. A pregnant pause, then, "You held a meeting and announced your plan to unleash an explosive, literal time capsule in London, in order to punish the human race for its technical advances. And you may have swept for surveillance, but I'm still a lot cleverer than you."

He turned his attention back to the General. "So, you're the Heimat Squad, posing as the Galactic Council. Still policing the universe as you deem fit, I see. Because, according to our friend, Mr. Eternity, you think that somehow, humanity has too much technological power in the coming centuries, and you're trying to make them pay for it by never having it."

General Kir was probably good at a lot of things, but the Doctor guessed that bluffing at Poker would not have been one of them. The man's jaw dropped, and his eyes fixed on the Doctor, wide and shocked.

He recovered within a few seconds, but it was too late.

"In septuaginta annis, et tempus advenit responsio," the Doctor said. "'In seventy years, the time of answering arrives.' That's your objective, written right there on a slab on a sidewalk in London, isn't it? Seventy years from the beginning of the sequence, which is 1938, you'll force the humans to be accountable for what they are destined to create. You'll stick them in a time loop, lock them in a tumultuous century forever and ever, which will become a dark age of paranoia and hatred."

General Kir was eerily quiet for a few moments. He studied the Doctor, and seemed to weigh his options, then said, "Your people agreed with us."

"My people? They were quite often great blooming arseholes, in my view, and I rarely agreed with them."

The General sighed. "In their view, and ours, 2008 is when it starts to build to ridiculous proportions."

"What does?"

"Technology on Earth. Or at least, in the occidental regions, which seem to dominate the culture of the planet. They get hold of certain concepts, and it spins out of control. It becomes a snowball, and the advancements come faster and faster until…"

"Until what?" the Doctor wondered. "What do you think their endgame is, exactly, General? Do you even know any humans? I mean, apart from Mr. Eternity?"

"It's not about their endgame. In fact, I might argue that it's about their lack of an endgame. Or at least their lack of reflection on where they are headed with all of that power."

"Interesting," the Doctor muttered, looking the General over.

Kir continued, "The humans, as of 2008, have begun to carry computer devices in their pockets as a matter of expectation, before they are ready for the sociological changes it will bring, and it grows from there. The devices become 'smart,' and can answer any question. It begins with Siri, and grows, within ten years, into Alexa, the first of a commercial form of artificial intelligence that rather surprises people, even at the time."

"Humans get semi-moronic AI in their homes, and you want to imprison them forever?"

The General ignored the question. "Five years after that, the MRI sees a huge jump in detail and utility, thanks to computer science, and programmers begin exploring using the new, so-called 'Super-MRI' imaging of the human brain as a blue print for artificial intelligence."

"Countless other civilisations have done the same sort of thing, General Kir," the Doctor protested.

"Not with the speed of the humans, relative to intelligence, and therefore not with quite such a low capacity for understanding the impact it will have," Kir retorted. "They do this before they even begin to colonise other planets, or work cooperatively with other intelligent civilisations! They have not thought about how the cultural ramifications will affect the universe. They only think of themselves."

"So, you stop them altogether? Rather than putting mechanisms in place, encouraging them to be more reflective?"

"The artificial intelligence boom in the twenty-first century sets into motion the events of the Great Cyborg Haulocaust of 2245," Kir said. "And this, as you know, turns out to be one of the most profound social injustices of the known universe."

"Now, that's a bit of a stretch!" the Doctor declared. "You're just saying that because the Kyriarch System makes a nuisance of itself, and takes the largest hit."

"Fear of the unknown breeds within humans, even as they reach out into the universe and colonise Mars, then Haapfang (which they rename), and onto space stations and other galaxies, and whatnot, until pure-bred humans are seen as the only valid human…"

"Only amongst some!"

"And cyborg hybrids become abominations that represent the tainting, the bastardisation of the human race. And so, an attempted genocide ensues…"

"An attack perpetrated by one faction that will come from one planet."

"One faction carrying human mores, human nature, human fear. And their efforts spread – you know this, Doctor! Any intelligent species would see to it that this type of philistine is eradicated before advancing with something that's going to challenge said philistines' worldview."

"Well, I wholeheartedly disagree with you there," the Doctor said. He began pacing in a circle, speaking with gusto and passion. "I mean, if you wait for everyone to shed their qualms and get on-board, nothing will ever happen. That's why I love humans! They take that step forward, even when maybe they shouldn't! Even when it might not be safe! Just to see what else can be done, what good can be done, or how much further up they can climb. Frankly, it's the best thing about them!"

"Nonsense."

"General, do you know what the cleverest non-Time-Lord I've ever met said to me once? We were trapped, and I told her we should investigate, and I warned her that we might die. Her reply, without even blinking, was, 'We might not.' And d'you know what? She saved my life that day, and that of a thousand other people. And not just that day, either! In the two years following, you wouldn't believe what she accomplished, with that maybe this won't be horrible spirit! She was human, and she took step after step forward, quite literally, that brought a despot to his knees. And, she even used technology to do it!

"Yes, taking that step forward often leads to misfortune down the line. But it's nothing compared to what never taking that step can lead to."

The General studied the Doctor. "Are you actually suggesting that the humans' recklessness is their greatest asset?"

"Not their greatest asset, perhaps, but it's what gets them through sometimes," the Doctor answered. "I know them well. I love them. So… well, maybe I'm not exactly objective."

"Maybe, Doctor?"

"All right, do you want objective?" asked the Doctor. "Here's objective. Over and above all of that other stuff I just said, think about this: the destruction of Bowie Base One on Mars in 2049 is a fixed point. It needs to happen, if the fabric of space-time is to remain intact all over the universe. And General, without the humans making advances as quickly as they do in the early twenty-first century, the Bowie Base can't exist, nor be destroyed. Come to that, if humanity ceases to exist as we know it in 2008, the Bowie Base can't even become a glimmer in someone's eye! Simple cause-to-effect.

"Now I think of it," the Doctor went on. "What were the Time Lords thinking? I mean, did they really believe the universe could just do without the influence of humanity, spreading throughout the cosmos? Even if a fixed point gets undercut? That seems mad. Although… they had practically no respect for human intelligence…"

"On that, we agreed," General Kir said, darkly.

"The Heimat Squad and the High Council of Gallifrey do not get to decide that. You're messing about with the lives of seven billion people," the Doctor said, his voice now hard as nails. "Besides, do you know what the impact of releasing a capsule containing the year 1938 will do to the planet, physically? Here comes the other part of the apocalypse, the hell-on-Earth scenario. The pressure generated has the potential to flatten the city of London. Do you know what will happen to the city, then, in 1940 when the Blitz begins? London will never, ever recover. It will be back to rubble, back to ash. The UK will collapse, without its Capitol! Do you know what happens then? A huge amount of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries changes direction, and those times become torture to live in. Forget JFK, the Cold War, and 9/11. Those things will pale in comparison to what humanity will have to deal with if the Allies can't fight, and the Axis wins World War II. Is this what you want for them? A slow, slow burn that will the human spirit?"

The Doctor stole a glance at Greene. He detected a slight hint of panic on his face. None of this, of course, had occurred to him. He had lived through World War II, and the rest of the twentieth century, and had some idea of the "apocalypse" the Doctor was discussing.

"They might be able to witness their own ingenuity come to fruition," said the General. "It might make for a felicitous, though confined, existence."

"Not if the Nazis take over Europe, General! And besides, what are they, bugs in a bloody jar?" the Doctor shouted. "They're not your playthings, do you hear me? You can't just decide to confine a living, breathing, vibrant collection of civilizations to a time loop! And I would say the same thing to the Time Lords if they were here!"

"Oh, Doctor," the General sighed.

"That's right, Kir: I would stop them. And I will stop you. Unless you call this off."

"You can't stop it."

"I can. I am. I refuse to help."

"That's quite a shame, Doctor," the General said, terrifyingly calmly. "Quite a shame, indeed."

Okay, well... the General is pissed. What next?

Whatever your thoughts, leave me a review. Honestly, they make my day! Thank you for reading. :-)