Hack the Planet

Adam

Oswin had told him in the past that it wasn't dying and getting shoved inside a Dalek that made her so damaged, the entire process had begun years before that, when she was around seventeen to be specific, and that it was rather a side-effect of her intelligence than anything else. She wasn't even allowed to live for two decades before the cracks began to show, and she wasn't allowed to live for three decades at all, dying before she reached that next stage of life. And yet, he could not tell if it was a good thing or a bad thing that as her state of mind had gradually become a husk of insecurity and self-deprecation, her genius had not been diminished. Because here was a girl with a home-grown AI on her shoulder doing equations as quickly as a supercomputer would to work out space coordinates, using a pen and paper to create the arithmetic in illegible scribbles, while at the same time explaining to Adam Mitchell what to do to break the lock on the TARDIS emergency teleporters and wire them up with a Chula transponder from three-thousand years in the future.

"So, wait, you're from the future?" Kowalczyk questioned them. The members of D-Kay kept offering to help, but Oswin wasn't letting them for whatever reason, preferring instead to opt for Adam and Sprite's assistance. Sometimes they lent her a tool, like the micro-screwdriver she was currently using to tinker with the transponder, while Adam 'checked over' her equations (which was proving difficult because her handwriting was terrible.)

"Oh, Adam's not, but I am," Oswin said, "My brother-in-law has a time machine."

"And he's from the future?"

"He's an alien, I don't know when he's from, exactly," Oswin shrugged, "He probably doesn't know himself. I don't think he even knows when his birthday is, if they even have birthdays on that planet in the same way." Adam still didn't think it was wise to tell these strangers so many things, but he had a knack for secrecy. After all, he hadn't really told Oswin he was rich until after they'd started dating, and she hadn't known he had a sister for weeks. The fact that she still hadn't met his parents was evidence enough. If he had it his way, he wouldn't tell them a thing, it wasn't like they needed these hackers at all, and he remained suspicious of Chris Kowalczyk's motivations for coming to work at CyTech.

Oswin put the transponder down and took out her phone, which was not any kind of phone Adam had ever seen before and he often saw her do some unusual things with it, including right then. He didn't really know what she was doing, but it looked a little bit like she was writing quite a great deal of code with her thumbs in a black-and-blue app.

"What are you doing?"

"Calling in a favour," she answered cryptically. Of course she was an open book except when he wanted to know something, then she kept stuff to herself and smiled at him so that he wouldn't be inclined to ask any more questions. He wanted to know what she was doing quite desperately, but that smile told him that no matter how hard he tried to ply her she wasn't going to take the bait. He would have to wait and see what trick she was pulling, just like everybody always had to, in a strand of showmanship she no doubt absorbed from being around the Doctor for too long. Or Jenny, Jenny was always keeping things to herself until one final, crucial moment.

"Who?"

"You'll see," was all she said. He believed her.

"What next, then?" he pressed.

"Hmm? Oh, nothing."

"Nothing?"

"No, it's done. I've done it. Programmed in the coordinates. You did double check them, didn't you?"

"I, uh… you know, you really need to fix your handwriting…" She scowled at him, and then snatched the notebook full of her newest calculations back out of his hands. "And these shorthand languages you have – I don't know how to decipher them."

"Shorthand languages?" asked 8-Bit, or Jacob Lowe, who had previously tried to get Oswin to explain to him the fundamentals of how time travel worked, though she wasn't having it.

"He's just making excuses, like he doesn't speak five languages himself."

"Six," said Adam.

"Pardon?" Oswin asked.

"I can speak six languages."

She smiled, "I can speak nine." He pouted. "I should learn some more. Twelve languages has a better ring to it."

"I'm sure your maths is good enough," Adam told her.

"'Good enough' isn't… well, good enough. It has to be perfect or we'll end up getting teleported into the middle of space. And in case you haven't worked it out yet in your backwards century, that's bad because there's no air in space, and you need air to breathe," she patronised him, but he thought this was directed more at the other people in the room. Then she took out her phone again.

"Hey – we said no talking to the AI," Chris argued.

"I've already worked it out, I'm sorry that I want to make doubly-sure that I'm not catapulting the pair of us into oblivion. I don't actually need to prove myself to a bunch of nerds who spend their time trying to break Google from inside a storage unit." Adam thought that that was legitimately mean, and she proceeded to get Helix to do the same calculations she had just done. Unsurprisingly, Helix gave the exact same long string of coordinates. Oswin did not boast about getting the answer correct, she was only relieved.

"How does it work?" asked Jacob. He wanted to know how everything worked, every little thing.

"Well," Oswin began, picking up the transponder, passing to Adam the notebook, "You just hold it in your hands," she held it in her hand, and then reached over to grab Adam's hand and place that one the device as well, pressing down tightly so that he would hold on, "And then you flick this little toggle I just screwed on, and-" And she flicked the toggle, but it was a very uncomfortable teleport, like using a vortex manipulator. What was it the Doctor always said? Time travel without a capsule. Nasty.

He landed with a thud somewhere else entirely, somewhere much warmer and darker, and something hard and heavy landed on top of him and winded him even more than being wrenched across space had winded him already. It took a few moments to get his bearings, or even begin to try to get his bearings, and he realised he was holding a leg. A big, metal, fake leg. Somebody cleared their throat, and he saw Oswin sitting up nearby holding her Sphere in her lap; the transponder was on the floor in front of her.

"The teleport shut me off for a second," she explained, "Lost my leg. It's strange just how many times you can lose an appendage you only have two of to begin with."

"Yeah…" he looked around in the dark, "Where are we?"

"Spaceship. Engine room." That was why it was so warm. "Those three talked a lot, didn't they?"

"I think you talk a lot," he pointed out.

"Too much?"

"No, just a lot," he crawled over to her to give her the leg back, at the same time Sprite appeared from a shadowy corner dragging Oswin's cane behind him. "I told you your maths was good enough."

"So you did," she said, rolling up the left leg of her jeans so that her scarred stump was revealed, and she could reattach the prosthetic. He'd seen her do this dozens of times. "Should've brought Nios, she would have loved all their questions, might've even murdered one of them because she loves questions so much. I can't believe that's what Jacob Lowe was doing before Darling picked him up. Maybe this is why he never talks to me, because he doesn't want to reveal anything about the future, and not because he's incredibly boring."

"This future? Doesn't seem like there's much to tell."

"You never know. Maybe we're going to die, or something."

"Thanks for that," he said, watching her closely. It was just when she had fixed her leg back on that he decide to act on a sudden impulse – and he was probably the least impulsive person he had ever met – and gently touched her chin, turning her face towards him, so that he could kiss her. Oswin kissed him back without hesitation, like she had been waiting for him to show some initiative.

"What was that for?" she asked eventually when he stopped, smiling, still leaning towards him. He touched her face lightly.

"You said we might die," he pointed out.

"I was joking."

"Yeah, but… just in case.

"We'll be okay. I only had to dismantle the one teleporter keyring, after all; we've still got yours," she said. That was true, "And my special friend."

"Uh-huh."

"Come on, help me up, let's take a look around," she said. He got to his feet and lifted her too, steadying her carefully as she regained her balance.

"What do you think's going on? Like, really? What's all this about?" he queried, letting her take his arm as they proceeded towards the exit of the engine room. He couldn't help but think that her personal battle with herself that had led to her letting both her legs re-deteriorate was maybe not so helpful, given their day-to-day activities.

"Some idiot's stolen a Time Agency ship and is, for an unknown reason, trying to destroy Facebook. I mean, you come back from the future with access to so much technology and then all you do is try to attack Silicon Valley with ransomware? Your hacker protégés are probably completely wrong, this person doesn't know how to hack a transponder like that to exploit Cyborg. Even if he got in, he wouldn't know what to do," Oswin said, then she lowered her voice, "I don't even think they know how to turn the lights on. It's so dark in here. This thing is a troop transport vehicle."

"There are that many Time Agents?"

"Sort of. The Time Agents are like Time Lords, they can really be any species."

"Time Lords can be any species? I thought they were a species…?"

"It's complicated. It's exposure to the time vortex that creates Time Lords, Mitchell – that's how River was born. She's biologically human, just the one heart, but she's a Time Lord. Gallifreyans hoard it to themselves – honestly, when you've read as much as I have, it becomes pretty clear that they're generally just a bunch of uppity, self-appointed, intergalactic, aristocratic arseholes. The Doctor's really the best of the bunch, he ran away, after all. And then killed the rest of them. Anyway, the Time Agents recruit from all over, any species, the Chula are just one of them, and they build good ships. So the Time Agency use mainly Chula ships. And then Jack stole one of them and, uh – did that happen before or after you left?"

"After. Immediately after," he said resentfully.

"Ah," a wry smile crept onto her face, "So, what you're saying is that Jack is second-best to you?"

"I don't think so."

"Sloppy seconds, I'll bet."

"Gross."

"They left Jack behind, too, and without the courtesy of taking him home first," Oswin pointed out, "Clearly, the evidence proves that you're, like, miles better than he is."

"You see?"

"See what?"

"I told you you're sweet and cute." She looked away, going red.

"Masquerade!" A man's voice suddenly shouted over the ship's tannoy, making Adam jump, "That's what I'm thinking. It'll all happen in a masquerade. The whole thing. That way, everyone's on even footing, there's none of that, uh, classism. Are you getting all this down?" A pause. "You better be. It's genius. The main focus will be the cake. It'll take centre-stage, the whole time, and they're like – 'when is somebody going to cut this cake?' and they're preparing to eat it, but the audience don't know why the cake is there. And nobody ever eats the cake. It symbolises… impotence. Yeah? Are you definitely writing this down? A genius can't be held accountable for a loss of his ideas."

"I told you," said Oswin, "He's an idiot. What's he talking about? Impotent cake?"

"But we don't know who he's talking to," Adam pointed out, "Whoever he's talking to might not be an idiot."

"You damn robot! Why isn't the picture-box turned on!? I'm missing my videos!" the man shouted suddenly, and there was another pause in the place of somebody else's response, "I don't care that I said 'no interruptions.' Do you think Kim, Kourtney and Khloé have to put up with this kind of crap!? No! Turn on the damn thing! And why didn't you tell me I accidentally kicked the button to turn the PA system on!? We're trying to preserve energy here you useless-" the comms died when he noticed what he'd done.

"He's talking to a computer," Oswin pointed out.

"An AI?"

"Doubtful. Chula ships generally have automated computers in them. It's basically Siri but it can make your food. There was one on the Alaska, actually, but it didn't really translate into my hallucination. But it's really nothing more than a voice in a box."

"A voice in a box, you say? Then what does that make me?" yet another voice emanated out of the shadows, and quite literally from the shadows, Adam realised, when he saw who it was and finally Oswin's comments about 'calling in a favour' all made sense. It was the Shadow, the dark cloud of microscopic alien piranhas himself. Adam had to squint to even see the outline of his transparent suit.

"My best friend in the world right now," Oswin said, "We should get friendship bracelets." The Shadow said nothing for a while, then changed the subject.

"You're lucky he already has a bounty on his head. The Time Agency are desperate to get their ship back. Thanks for the tip-off."

"You're my favourite morally-grey shapeless creature," Oswin grinned.

"I've got a question," Adam began, "What do you do with the money you earn from being a bounty hunter?"

"I collect antique motorcycles," the Shadow said.

"Uh… are you telling the truth…?" Adam asked slowly. The Shadow did not speak. "Okay, then…"

"I'm going to go grab this moron now, if that's alright with you two geniuses." It didn't sound like the Shadow cared whether they were alright with it or not, but Oswin smiled toothily and gave the shape a thumbs-up.

The Shadow only became clear when the door to the cockpit was opened and the light from within illuminated his outline, where he looked like a void of light, a black hole shaped like a person.

"Did you see that!" the man in the cockpit shouted to nobody in particular as Adam and Oswin followed in the Shadow's wake, "She's getting arrested and Kim's just taking selfies! This is what I'm saying about the corruption of technology. I mean, it's funny, but corrupt. It's what I aim to capture in my play, my masterpiece, plays don't need technology."

"Now, now," said the Shadow loudly, "Without technology, there wouldn't have been any time-ship for you to steal." The guy screamed – literally, screamed – and fell out of his chair, where they saw he was only wearing a vest and a pair of boxers and looked like he hadn't had a wash for a good few days. His hair shone with grease and he was eating something out of a bowl.

"Are you eating dry spaghetti?" Adam asked, staring at him.

"What do you mean, 'dry'?" he asked, then he took a bite out of a handful of dry sticks of spaghetti.

"Eating dry spaghetti in your pants and watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians?" Adam questioned.

"What? No! Computer – turn off the picture-box."

"It's a TV," corrected Adam.

"I think some introductions are in order," the Shadow began.

"No need," snapped the man, who was actually more of a boy than a man, he looked to be scarcely older than eighteen, "I know who he is. Adam Mitchell. The golden boy of technical innovation – in twenty years everyone in this hellish century is going to have forgotten Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison and Leonardo Da Vinci and it'll be this one's name on their lips. He's going to put Elon Musk to shame with his contributions to the digital era – and he's cuter than Elon Musk, too."

"Yeah, he's definitely cute…" Oswin agreed, then stopped, "I didn't mean to say that out loud…"

"Who are you?"

"His boyfriend. I mean – girlfriend, he's my boyfriend. I'm from your century, actually, I'm a hologram."

"This is what I mean. It's an affront to everything logical in the world – science gone mad. Holograms? The dead should stay dead. That's what I aim to do. And now you've delivered him, right to me, the boy who starts it all. If I killed him, do you know how much human progress would be stalled? Thrown right back into the dark ages."

"And how are you going to kill him?" the Shadow challenged, and the boy looked around the room for anything that could be weaponised. Unfortunately, all he had was his spaghetti and a carton of almond milk dripping onto the floor.

"Use my natural strength," he said eventually. Then he bit off more spaghetti.

"You're supposed to boil it before you eat it," Adam said, "And have it with sauce."

"It wouldn't be crunchy if you boiled it."

"It's not supposed to be crunchy!" he exclaimed.

"Careful, babe. Don't get too stressed," Oswin told him, "Nobody's forcing you to eat the spaghetti. This crazy luddite probably doesn't know how to boil a kettle, and even my sister knows how to boil a kettle and she's shit, so that's saying something."

"His name is Landon Briggs," said the Shadow eventually, "He's wanted for assault."

"Whose assault!?" the boy shouted in anger.

"The assault of the Time Agent whose ship this was. I heard you gave her a nasty scratch. Maybe some bruises," the Shadow sounded bored. Then again, Adam had never heard the Shadow not sound bored. Maybe it was hard for a swarm in a suit to show much emotion.

"She was a criminal herself. An agent of technology."

"You need to use your computer to turn your TV on and off," Oswin pointed out, "It's got buttons on it, and a remote."

"I'm going to write a play about this. You can't stop me."

"Nobody's going to care about your play," the Shadow told him. "In fact, nobody really cares about you. The Time Agency are more bothered about their transport ship being returned to them than about the boy who stole it. But I'm sure the guards at Stormcage will like your company very much."

"Stormcage!? You can't take me there!"

"What are you going to do about it?" the Shadow challenged, stepping closer.

"I'll… fly us into the sun! Computer, set a course for the sun! The centre of the sun."

"It is against my programming to do anything that may cause damage to the ship or its registered crew," the computer said in a stiff, female voice. Landon Briggs kicked the wall, then gasped in pain when he stubbed his big toe and he dropped his handful of spaghetti. Adam Mitchell never liked to talk ill of people, but this boy was kind of pathetic.

"Then I'll pilot the ship myself!" he shouted in anguish. Oswin quickly took out her phone.

"Helix, would you kindly tap into this Chula ship and lock the steering so that it's immobile?" she requested, "Please and thanks."

"Affirmative, Miss Oswald." Sure enough, when Landon tried to mess with the controls, absolutely nothing happened. He couldn't even get his precious 'picture box' to turn back on. Adam wondered if they had the Kardashians in Stormcage.

"You'll never catch me," he said.

"You've already been caught," the Shadow told him.

"Why do you hate technology?" Adam questioned, "Out of interest."

"It makes everything futile, and meaningless. In the future, I'm nobody. At least here people are scared of me, and what I might do."

"They're really not…"

"There's no privacy of information. Everything about everyone, from birth to death and even post-death in some obscene cases, is just… there. You can find everything. Nothing gets deleted forever. And people – they find out things about me, things from, you know – these – it's girls, see. They talk to each other. Through technology. And then they don't talk to me!"

"Probably ought to just, you know, not be a dickhead, I suppose," Oswin shrugged, "If you're nice to girls, then they'll talk to you. Mitchell's nice to everybody, and that's why I love him."

"It's an illusion. Girls don't want people to be nice to them. I'm nice to them."

"Babe," Oswin stage-whispered to Adam, "He sounds like some of those boys you play World of Warcraft with."

"You can't just generalise the entire WOW community like that," he told her, "I mean, sure, some of them are like that, but people in every walk of life are like that. Not just people who play WOW."

"Don't call it 'wow', you're such a dork."

"You'll regret this," Landon declared as the Shadow went over and grabbed him. He struggled a little but was no match for a gang of irritated Vashta Nerada.

"Be quiet, or I might get hungry during our trip back to the future."

"You'll see," he said, "You'll all see. When I write my play. You'll all be in it, I'll draw attention to these injustices, and then everyone will know my name. Landon Biggs. I mean – shit – Briggs."

"You don't even know your own name, mate," said Adam. By now, the Shadow had Landon in a pair of glowing, spacey-looking handcuffs and had pushed him away into a corner.

"They'll shock you if you wander too far away from me," he warned.

"This is inhuman."

"I'm not human, so I don't really care," said the Shadow monotonously, then he turned back to Oswin, "If you care to have your AI unlock the controls, I'll fly the ship now. And then if you tell me where you'd like me to drop you off, since I assume you don't want to come to Stormcage, where you'd both be incarcerated immediately."

"What? Both of us? Why?" Oswin asked.

"You for mass murder."

She shrugged, "Understandable."

"Him for stealing sensitive information about the future and taking it back to the past."

"Fair enough…" Adam mumbled. He really hadn't thought about the repercussions of his actions that day in the year 200,000. "Could you just drop us off at CyTech HQ? I've got some business to take care of…"

AN: Tell you what's scary – last week Facebook and Instagram went down mysteriously for a few hours, so maybe Landon Briggs has struck again in his quest to get revenge on all of humankind because he can't get a girlfriend.