Subliminal Messages

Thirteen

Whose stupid idea had it been to go right into the factory that was being used by their enemies without doing any reconnaissance, having any weapons, or even so much as a plan if things all went south? Oh, yeah, the Doctor thought to herself, mine. Maybe if she hadn't been so stubborn and moody earlier she wouldn't now be strapped to a chair with electrodes on her head watching a very large television screen that was suspended in front of her. It was funny, because she was sure that televisions hadn't been invented at all in 1912. Talking movies hadn't even been invented in 1912. Had ordinary movies been invented in 1912? Did anything of the world even exist until after 1912? Her mind was foggy. It was that damned amnesia that always cropped up because of that pesky brain damage she'd suffered after her traumatic regeneration. Even when she woke up from sleeping she sometimes forgot her wife's name for a few minutes. And thinking of her wife, what was her name…?

"There's no use fighting," said a female voice from somewhere the Doctor could not see, because she was strapped very tightly to that chair with leather restraints and belts pulled across her forehead and her arms and legs. She couldn't look either side of her. "We always succeed. Just let the images sink into your brain." She could not tell what the 'images' she was being made to watch were. It was a lot of bright lights that gave her a headache, and she didn't really understand what was happening, or why it was a woman who should be speaking to her.

"Who are you?" she managed to ask. It was perfectly possible that she knew exactly what was going on, and she had just forgotten. There was a laugh.

"Don't you worry about that. Just pay attention to the screen…" said the voice. The Doctor could barely even close her eyes and blink – it was all a lot like A Clockwork Orange, she thought. She hadn't turned into a psychopath, had she?

Because she couldn't very well do anything about the bright lights being shown to her, or escape her chair (which was kind of comfy) she resolved that, to the best of her abilities, she was going to have to think back and figure out what, exactly, had happened…

She and Jenny Flint had split up, she was sure, away from Madame Vastra and her own Nameless Wife. They had most definitely been discussing what to do next with Emmeline Pankhurst, when Vastra had resolved that it would be better to interrogate a disillusioned ex-suffragette before rushing off into danger. And the Doctor had not listened, because she hadn't been keen on being told what to do by Vastra, so she had decided they had better just go off to some allegedly-derelict old munitions factory where Strax had noticed some suspicious activity instead. And then what had happened…?

"When's your birthday?" she remembered asking Jenny Flint as they walked.

"'Scuse me?"

"Your birthday, when is it?"

"Next week," Jenny answered, "Why?"

"Oh, no reason, I just couldn't help but notice the notes you and the wife wrote to each other on your shopping list. Since Strax took us to do the shopping," Thirteen explained, "All that fuss over a bag of sugar."

"I didn't realise Strax had taken you shopping…" she said uneasily. Clearly, she wasn't a fan of the thought the Doctor had been reading over some private notes between a married couple.

"I thought they were sweet," the Doctor said, and Jenny blushed slightly, "The thing about how she worries about you not eating enough fruit, and that Strax had better make sure to buy extra mince because 'cottage pie is Jenny's favourite.'" She copied Vastra's English accent when she spoke, which amused Jenny, because it was a pretty accurate impression of Vastra – who, on occasion, was capable of sounding rather posh and haughty.

"That was quite good," she said.

"Ah, thanks, I'm good at accents. Not like my daughter, have you heard her? No matter what accent she tries to do she manages to be racist by accident," Thirteen shook her head, "It's better for all of us if she carries on pretending she's from the fancy bit of London." Jenny had been leading the way to this Attaway Arms Company – the Doctor remembered that now.

"Did she really refuse to use the TARDIS to come and get you?"

"Yeah," said the Doctor, annoyed, "Lucky she did, though. Strax wouldn't've let Pankhurst into the house otherwise, you wouldn't have this case to investigate. Besides… it has been good having a break from… home. You know, teaching, it's… it can be exhausting is all I mean. There's a lot of marking. I don't know anything about marking. I think I give them too high grades, anyway…"

"Look, Doctor," Jenny began, sounding embarrassed, "I'm sorry about all the… noise…"

"Don't mention it. It's penance, I figure – everybody's always complaining about Nameless Wife-" (strain as she might, in the present moment, Thirteen could still not remember the name of the woman who lived in her most positive thoughts and her happiest memories) "-and I making too much noise. It's been that way for, like, half a century. Just desserts, y'know? Plus, all this stuff is way too interesting to stay mad at somebody."

"So do you think it's robots, then?" Jenny asked.

"Whatever it is going on, I doubt it's human engineering at all," Thirteen said, "Any change like that in a person has to have some pretty deep roots. But that makes everything totally weirder, because why would a bunch of aliens care so much about women getting the vote? How would it affect them?"

"Maybe it's an invasion? They… kidnap women, keep them locked up in that factory, and replace them? Sleeper agents. One day they'll have replaced everybody without us noticing," Jenny said.

"Just like in that movie…" the Doctor mused.

"What happens?"

"These aliens come to Earth, and pretend to be pets and people and stuff, in disguise, and nobody even notices. It always freaked me out how much it reminds me of myself, almost like they knew me. What's it called, what's it called…. Oh, Lilo & Stitch, that's right. Over ninety years til it hits the screens, though. Don't hold your breath waiting for it. Where's this factory?"

"Just over there," Jenny said, pointing. They were walking down a road, on the left of which were more terraces, and on the right of which was a rather desolate patch of wasteland. No doubt something had been demolished recently, and it was soon going to be replaced with something else. She couldn't remember London geography well enough to try and identify for herself what these streets might be like in a hundred years. And there the factory was, too, with a big painted advertisement for the Attaway Arms Company fading and peeling off the wall facing them.

"I guess Strax is right; for an empty factory it sure does have a lot of carts outside," she noted. It did, as well, large covered cars and dark carriages alike. "A perfect fleet for a discreet kidnapping spree. Now, what's the way to get inside, do you reckon?"

"Probably posing as one of their victims, but it depends how tight their records are," Jenny said, "Course, they can't be nicking people for long, otherwise the papers'd be full've mysterious vanishings."

"In and out in a couple of hours – sounds efficient. They've gotta have a system, a list, or something, we couldn't show up. We'd just be stowaways. We're gonna have to sneak in," the Doctor said, "What's the betting a place like that doesn't produce much sewage?"

"Sewage?"

"Marvellous invention, the London sewage system," the Doctor said, leading them away from the factory down the road and into that stretch of wasteland where she had, in fact, spotted a large pipe, "Of course, you wouldn't have been born yet in 1858 when the Great Stink happened, and Vastra didn't come out of hibernation until '63. I was there, you know, the whole thing was, uh… well, people would blame the hot summer weather, but there was a particular incident to do with the incubation of these alien eggs. They all hatched at once and boy do the inside of those eggs stink. Imagine it, the middle of the night and a thousand taklaks were born on planet Earth. It's an unfortunate thing that taklaks only live for half an hour before they die, and then they disintegrate and spread on their air like seeds. Seeds that got washed away with the river growing into more eggs who knows where? Completely harmless, but it was a sight, and it was that which led to the creation of the sewage system. A lesser-known bit of history."

"Taklaks?" Jenny asked, "Never heard of them."

"Nah, they're just insects really. Lucky they hatched at night. Ace liked seeing them, though. Now," she changed the subject, having just trudged through that grim and boggy patch of brownfield to get to the open sewage juncture, which was leaking a few dregs of dark liquid onto the ground, "Just don't touch anything and remember your nose pegs and we'll be fine. Unfortunately, I left all my nose pegs in my other pants… help me with this grate." She took out her sonic screwdriver to open the gate and Jenny pulled the rusty thing open, her palms becoming filthy when she did.

"Eurgh."

"I said not to touch anything."

"But-"

"No time for excuses, c'mon," the Doctor led them into the tunnel, taking her torch out of her bag as she went to light up the way. Not that the way was very pleasant when it was lit up, and a great number of rats fled away from them, but the Doctor wasn't squeamish, and neither was Jenny Flint.

"It doesn't half stink down here," Jenny complained.

"That's the good thing about sewers, never any guards or vagrants. Nobody wants to be down here."

"Including me…"

"I'm sure you've been in worse places before. Now, tell me – how bad are Vastra's baking skills?" the Doctor asked. She was trying to lighten the mood, take their mind of their surroundings. Well, mainly Jenny's mind, she herself wasn't that bothered by the sewers they were paddling in. The good thing was, it worked, it started Jenny off on a whole talk about how terrible Vastra was at cooking. That was one of the main reasons she had originally hired a maid, Jenny explained, just because of that. "I thought it was because you caught her eye?" the Doctor asked wryly.

"Well, I – I couldn't say," Jenny said.

"You and Vastra don't talk about that stuff?"

"You and I don't talk about that stuff," she said.

"Aww, how come? Ask me a question about Nameless Wife if you like," the Doctor shrugged (that name, whatever it was, still escaped her. There she was on the tip of Thirteen's tongue…)

"Private things should stay private."

"Oh yeah?" the Doctor asked, "Is that why I totally heard you yelling about saddles the other night?"

"You-!" she exclaimed, going the same colour as a strawberry.

"I mean I'm not judging; god knows some of the stuff I've heard about my own Jenny – though, I guess nobody dates Captain Jack without a taste for the risqué…" that didn't even bear thinking about. "I'm just making a point."

"Isn't that a ladder?" Jenny asked quickly, grabbing Thirteen's hand to point the torch at something which had been glinting slightly. It was a ladder, dim shafts of light coming down through the grate above it.

"Ah-ha. Must be maintenance, or some sort of fire exit," Thirteen said. Approaching it, she switched off her flashlight and put it away again, and noises that were signs of inhabitants above reached them. Sounds like electrical generators and footsteps and whispering voices. She swapped the torch for the sonic screwdriver and went to work on the thin manhole above them, listening out all the while for anybody who might notice the odd sound of the device.

It wasn't a fire exit they had just trekked through, though. Nor was it for maintenance. They found themselves crawling up through a drain in a communal shower that didn't look like it had been used for years. There was mould coating the corners and crevices and grime solidifying between dirty tiles, but it was empty, at least. The sounds they'd been hearing from below had been faint because of the walls between their little shower room and the rest of the building. Maybe there wasn't any plumbing getting through? It wouldn't surprise her if that building was meant to be derelict, and if Vastra was right about nobody picking up the lease. Unfortunately, the room being a shower meant the window set into the nearby door was mottled and impossible to see through. Damn privacy making her subterfuge trickier.

"What now?" the Doctor asked Jenny, "You're the best at infiltration. I make a mess everywhere I go."

"You can say that again – dragging us through the bleeding sewers… we need to find a way up, I'd say. Any factory has the foreman's office where they can oversee everything. Whoever's occupying this building will probably still set up camp up there, which makes it harder for us unless we're lucky and they're not looking," she said, going to tentatively turn the handle of the door, which turned out to be unlocked.

She didn't know what she had been expecting to see. Cells, maybe? Full of kidnapped women whose doppelgängers were out there infiltrating society? Be those doppelgängers clones or robots? It was nothing of the sort, though. There were no gooey vats full of artificial cloning gel growing featureless bodies ready to be moulded, and there was no tell-tale production line pumping out skeletal droid after skeletal droid all waiting to have their silicone faces glued on. There were just booths. Booths and booths in lines, booths with large chairs and televisions in them.

"What is this?" Jenny asked.

"Irony, that's what, looks a bit like polling stations. God forbid they let women vote, though," the Doctor whispered. The women in the chairs, though, they were struggling, most of them were gagged and trying but not managing to scream for help. There was a loud noise of a heavy door being opened somewhere, and Jenny and the Doctor ducked behind the back of a large machine that was generating electricity, "This is a wireless generator…" she stared at it as they hid, "This technology doesn't exist yet. Neither do those televisions."

"So, what? They're from the future?"

"I doubt it, everything's a bit wrong to be of human design. I remember the Queen's coronation in 1953," Thirteen began.

"Another queen?" Jenny asked. She was going to continue what she had been saying, when shouting came their way. A fresh batch of women, only four or five, were being dragged into the factory through the door they had just heard being opened. Yet, they were being dragged in by other women. "This doesn't make any sense. Maybe everyone doesn't agree with Pankhurst, but women kidnapping other women to stop them from protesting?"

"Stop them from doing more than protesting, I'd wager; this whole place looks like a re-education facility. Brainwashing," Thirteen said.

"You'll never take away my voice!" one woman shrieked.

Another joined her, "To be doing this to your own! How could you turn on your sisters like this?"

And a harsh woman who was not on the side of these new victims, these ones still bearing the green, white and purple sashes of the suffragettes, said coldly, "Soon we will all be united, all of womankind as they were meant to be: silent and submissive."

"Well she isn't being very silent or submissive, bossing everyone around," Jenny muttered, the pair of them still observing.

"No. I think she's one of them too," Thirteen said, "This kind of thing affects everyone differently. There's something else, something or someone we haven't seen yet, pulling all the strings. Someone who probably isn't a woman." While the suffragettes were dragged into the aisles full of booths to be restrained like everyone else, Thirteen carried on what she had been saying about 1953, "There was this guy, Magpie. He was being manipulated by an alien into using TVs to steal peoples' faces. Had technology made from present-day materials to alien design. Earthling but not. That's what this is."

"Could it be the same alien?"

"What, the Wire? Oh, no way, the Wire took the face of the next queen, for crying out loud. How much bigger a symbol of matriarchy can you find than the Queen of England?" Thirteen said, "And all she wanted to do was feed on people. But alien intervention is definitely going on somewhere in this place. Okay, plan time – what was it you were saying about the foreman's office?"

"That's probably their base of operations," Jenny said.

"Right. Let's split up. I'm gonna try and disable these generators to turn off the machines. If we do that, we can rally the suffragettes in here – they're militant enough already, they'll definitely fight back if we free enough of them," Thirteen said, "You go up there and see if you can find anything of value. Assuming I'm successful, join the crowds afterwards."

"Alright," she nodded.

"Oh, and Jenny?" she said, then held up a fist, "Votes for women!" Jenny laughed and nodded.

When Jenny had disappeared into the shadows, as was her custom, Thirteen had then turned all of her attention onto scanning this generator she had been crouching behind with her sonic screwdriver. But what had happened after that? Sitting in her chair, she couldn't quite… but then she felt a smarting pain in the back of her head, something not a result of the restraints keeping her tied down. She knew that, if she were now in the same position as those captured women, she must have failed, and then it came to her as suddenly as it had come to her then: that sharp pain on her skull when something hard had hit her around the head. It had rendered her unconscious and now she had become woozy on amnesia.

"Someone hit me…" she croaked, "Knocked me out." But had they knocked out Jenny?

"Yes, it was me," said the harsh voice of a woman. That same woman who had been dragging in more suffragettes to fill up their machines.

"You're brainwashing people," said the Doctor, finally remembering everything. Well, almost everything, what was her spouse's name? "Brainwashing women into being perfect housewives. And not just suffragettes, either – it's all of them, isn't it? But why?"

"Women mustn't be allowed into a position of power. Honestly, it's usually almost finished working by now. You should be a drooling wreck like the rest of them are," she said.

"Are you a human?" Thirteen asked, and the woman stopped speaking.

"Are you not?" she said eventually, "That would explain the ineptitude of the machine…"

"You don't seem surprised by the suggestion."

"I was like them, too, but now I have seen the light." So she was a human, just a human being manipulated by something else. "I would tell you everything, if I was sure the re-education programming would take full effect on you. You're not supposed to remember anything."

"Why not tell me everything anyway? It's a fifty-fifty shot. Who are you?" Thirteen asked.

"Gertrude Fisher. A woman of minimal importance, until I became enlightened."

"Take me to your leaders," she said, then added, "I always love saying that."

"And what about you? Did you come here alone?"

"Sure I did," she said quickly. The woman must have turned a dial somewhere, because the images on the television screen suddenly grew a whole lot more intense, "Just tell me what species you're working for. Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want with turning the whole female population into slaves? There's no way you're the top of the hierarchy."

"An American, too…" she mused, ignoring Thirteen's questions. The images turned more and more vivid. She didn't know what they were, but they were definitely impressing something onto her brain, some sort of subconscious reprogramming of the way she thought. Such a thing was simple enough with the right technology and evil motive. "We weren't supposed to have reached America yet."

"Oh, well. I always liked to queue-jump," she said, "But, uh, whenever you get a spare minute – could you totally just pass one word to your evil overlords that the Doctor would like a word with them? That's 'the Doctor.' Can you remember that? Just 'the Doctor.' I'm sure they'll have heard of me."

"Ridiculous. Women can't be-" she was cut off. Thirteen didn't need to have been alive for 1200 years to recognise the sound of a person being choked. It was a hoarse, strangling sound, but the Doctor couldn't look around to see. She couldn't see anything at all except the images on that TV screen in front of her. She didn't even think she was in the main room downstairs; it was too quiet. Then there was a thudding sound as Gertrude Fisher's body collapsed onto the floor, and the TV screen exploded inside. Not enough to shatter it and send deadly bits of glass into Thirteen's head, but it broke completely of its own accord, and she was left with the remnants of its image burned into her eyes.

"You don't mind your conversation being interrupted by a woman, do you?" asked that sarky, witty voice she heard making amusing quips in her most treasured daydreams. She couldn't answer, because she was kissed immediately by this girl who smelt like strawberries and home, and she savoured every minute of it until the girl stopped and the Doctor's eyes adjusted after being bombarded by technicolour for the better part of an hour.

"You have the most beautiful smile," she said.

"And you should have listened to Vastra," said the girl, beginning to unfasten the Doctor's restraints.

"Hey, hey – I gotta ask you something," she said.

"Go on?"

"She hit me on the head pretty hard and has been showing me all that stuff…"

"Yeah, that stuff. I was wondering if you'd gotten any ideas into your head about being an ideal housewife? Because I wouldn't complain if you wanted to hoover the carpets a bit more often. And you never take the bins out."

"No, no – I'm sorry – I don't remember your name."

"This happens every time!" she complained, but she laughed, "Every time you even teleport into the next room you forget my name. Sometimes when you wake up on a morning you forget my name. I feel like you retain your own name better than you do mine sometimes, sweetheart." She continued with the restraints.

"I'm serious."

"And I'm Clara Oswald," she said, "Pleased to meet you. I've been your wife for fifty years, by the way. We live together and we've been sickeningly in love all this time."

"Clara. Weren't you investigating that woman? With Vastra?"

"God, these restraints are… listen, you're gonna freak out, but I'll catch you," Clara didn't answer her question.

"Freak out? Why would I – Clara!" she exclaimed, when Clara touched her hand and phased her through the chair, so that she fell backwards onto the floor. Well, she would have done, but Clara actually did catch her, and drag her away from it. She'd been right about them not being in the main room, this was the high-up foreman's office Jenny had been after. She must have been a special case because she'd broken in and tried to sabotage their equipment; she needed to be personally dealt with by Gertrude Fisher.

"You're such a baby about that."

"I like being solid. How did you get in here?"

"I'm the Phantom, remember? Sneaking into places is kind of my thing," Clara shrugged, "Why? How did you get in?"

"Through the drainage system."

"You're a real tramp, you know."

"Hey!"

"Where's Jenny?"

"I don't know, but I don't think she got caught. Where's Vastra?"

"Acquiring us a carriage to use as a getaway vehicle," Clara said, "We've got to hurry up. Now, do you have a plan?" She did have a plan, as a matter of fact.

"We have to destroy the generators and cut the power to let the women go before the process completes."

"On your feet, then. We've got half of an entire species to save."