Repetition Without Replication

Adam

"It seems impractical to build like this. What's the purpose of this replication?"

"You're looking at a great wonder of human engineering in one of the most powerful empires in the universe, and you think it's impractical?" the Ninth Doctor quizzed Nios. Sprite clung to her shoulder as she looked through a narrow window at an expanse of dark, metal skyscrapers, embossed against inky outer space like monuments. Adam thought they looked cool, but he supposed Nios did have a point – could it really be a good idea to build a Manhattan-esque sea of buildings out in space like that?

"Yes," said Nios, "The increased surface area makes this place drastically more susceptible to meteor strikes. It's an unnecessary risk just for a pointless sense of familiarity."

"A sense of familiarity is pointless?"

"What purpose does it serve?"

"I suppose you just don't have anything familiar you want to hold onto," said the Doctor. Adam saw Nios frown slightly; she didn't like that statement. Adam thought the Doctor had a point though – how old was Nios? Only a few years? Even less? Maybe she didn't have anything to cling to. Sprite, despite not having a face or being able to speak any language aside from a series of R2-D2 bleeps, appeared to be exhibiting a sense of wonder at the sight through the window.

"Can't you ask Adam questions?"

"Why? Are you uncomfortable?" Nine persisted.

"No, it's just exhausting."

"He's boring," Nine shrugged. Adam stood awkwardly nearby, feeling like a gooseberry, his hands deep in his pockets. They were in the lobby of the residency of somebody important, or who thought they were important, in the enormous, central skyscraper at the heart of the expansive space station. The man who lived there had a lot of digital portraits of himself on large, thin screens hanging from the walls, him in different poses, cracking a smarmy grin or flexing muscles he didn't actually have. The TARDIS had landed them just outside, and it had been the only door unlocked, with a notice pinned up saying that the man was 'taking interviews.'

"Is this what your house looks like?" It took him a minute to realise that Nios was speaking to him now, while Nine paced around as they waited for the door to be answered. "Pictures of yourself?"

"No, I hate pictures of myself," he said, "Oswin complains that we don't have any pictures together."

"You do live in a mansion, though?" Nios persisted. He felt as though he was getting the third degree. Nine glanced over his shoulder and listened in.

"I wouldn't say it was… it's a big house. It's modern architecture… that's not important; I'm thinking about selling it anyway, so." Selling his house was a very recent idea he hadn't even brought up to Oswin yet, though he thought he knew exactly what she would say: that he should do whatever will make him happy. Nios (and Nine) was perplexed.

"Why?"

"Well, it's just… kind of gaudy. Unnecessary. Empty. Nobody lives there when I'm away. I just thought, you know, I'll buy a flat, in Cambridge, close to CyTech headquarters, so I can keep an eye on things. I'm sure Oswin could do me a teleport link, or something. There's a deal going on at the moment for us to buy some big brownfield areas in London and Newcastle and I want to be able to oversee it," he shrugged.

"What are you going to do with the land you buy?" Nine asked sceptically, as though Adam was going to say he intended to build an enormous fracking site just a short walk from the Thames.

"I was going to build affordable housing and sheltered rehabs to help the homeless. Since the government isn't going to do it."

"Where's the profit in that?"

"There isn't any profit," said Adam, "We'll fund it with this new smartphone we're bringing out, which I'm also supposed to be helping develop…" His plan to buy a flat in Cambridge was looking more and more like the best option. "It's pretty hard to make a sustainable smartphone."

"Synths are sustainable," Nios said, which intrigued him greatly.

"Really? In what way?" he asked, enthralled.

"We're made with sustainable materials, manufactured by robots. The same way people in your century assemble cars. And when we break down, or die, they recycle us," she said very bitterly. Sprite's long legs could be seen just cresting the edge of her right shoulder, visible in Adam's wider field of vision, as though she had a big, metal spider crawling on her back.

He would have liked to have asked her more questions about her own sustainability but didn't think the Ninth Doctor would approve – what with Adam's spotty history 'stealing' advanced technology and knowledge – but their gracious host chose that moment to bestow his presence upon them. The automatic door opened so abruptly, and with such a nasty scraping sound, that Sprite jumped and hid further down Nios's back (Adam also jumped but hoped the other two didn't notice.) Out walked the man from the paintings, dressed in what looked like a fur coat and pyjamas. His strange clothes were only the first thing to be noticed about him, however; despite his youth, this man had a fully robotic arm, and a very jittery robotic eye, as well as a few robotic fingers on his other arm. He was a bona fide cyborg.

"Welcome, welcome!" he opened his strange arms to greet them. Adam would call them prosthetics but thought that 'prosthetics' didn't do them justice; these were full-on bionic appendages, far more advanced than even Oswin's leg (and he had never seen anything like her leg before).

"Happy to be here," said the Doctor, grinning, attempting to be polite (for once.) Nios, like Adam, was quite disturbed by this stranger. "Where is here, exactly?" The man frowned.

"It's Tem's house," he said.

"Who's Tem?" Nine asked.

"…This is Tem," he pointed at himself, "You're in Tem's abode. Welcome, welcome." He repeated himself, sounding like a malfunctioning machine. Was he a machine?

"Never trust a human who talks about themselves in the third person," Nios said quietly; Adam supposed if he wasn't human, Nios would be the first to know. He happened to share her sentiment of being sceptical when it came to people who spoke in the third person.

"And where's Tem's house?" Nine persisted, crossing his arms, casting a judgemental eye over the gaudy pictures on the walls. They scrolled through more than a dozen individual photographed poses of Tem like a slideshow, each one on a different real – and here Adam thought Oswin could be a narcissist sometime; she was nothing compared to this nutcase.

"Here, of course. In Eutopia Bay. But, with an 'E.' They said the 'E' means something, but the alphabet has always… hm… what's the word? For something's… you can't really…"

"Confused?" Nine asked.

"Yes! The alphabet has always confused me."

"What does he mean, 'with an "E"'?" Nios asked the Doctor.

"He means it's spelt E-U-T-O-P-I-A. It comes from the Latin. It means 'good-place.'"

"Isn't that what it means without an E?" Adam asked.

"No – didn't you ever study Latin and Ancient Greek?"

"No."

"With no 'E' it means 'no-place', as in, a 'utopia' could never exist. This is why I hate your Earth-languages – too many homophones. Confusing. You never know what you're saying half the time. Where I come from, we don't have homophones. Inconvenient. Anyway, Tem, we're a group of travelling salespeople." He changed topic alarmingly quickly, taking both Adam and Nios aback. Tem's eyes lit up.

"Meaning what?"

"We're selling… cameras."

"Cameras?" Now he was excited, seeing as he loved looking at himself so much, "But, I don't see you carrying any cameras."

"You think we'd bring valuable merchandise out here with us? For it get stolen?" The Doctor laughed at him. "Of course not. No, no, we sell one type of state of the art camera, here, I'll show you." He took out his psychic paper and held it up to Tem, who was thoroughly astounded by whatever he saw on it. Nine took it away again swiftly. "But only some people are eligible. You have to do a survey."

"A survey? I love surveys. They're the ones with the questions, right?"

"Correct answer," said Nine, "See, you're doing fantastically already. The first question is – what happened to your arms?"

"What do you mean?" He seemed perplexed.

"What happened to them?"

"In what way?"

"They're robot arms."

"Is that a question?"

"Why do you have robot arms?" Nine persisted.

"They needed an upgrade. They were boring."

"Upgrade?" Nios asked carefully. 'Upgrade' was Cyberman speak. Anyone knew that.

"All the Level One citizens are augmented."

"Augmented?" Adam asked abruptly. The Doctor was surprised that he had talked; maybe he'd forgotten he was there. "You mean like…? You know, never mind… there's just this game where, people get robot appendages like that, and they call them augmentations. Augs. It's not important, now that I think about it…"

"No. Doesn't seem important," said Nine coolly. Nios didn't say a word. Adam looked at his feet. "What do you mean 'Level One citizens'?"

"The highest level," said Tem, "People like me."

"What makes you higher level?"

"Well, you know. I'm a good person."

"Right."

"Why replace your body parts if they were functioning perfectly?" Nios inquired.

"It's the fashion."

"The… fashion? It strikes me more like self-mutilation, removing one's own extremities."

"All Level One citizens get augmented. That's how people know we're Level One."

"Huh…" Adam mused, remembering something Oswin had told him once. He, personally, thought he had mused rather quietly, but Nine and Nios both looked at him with curiosity, Nine apparently annoyed at him interrupting. "It's nothing, it's just, Oswin once told me this story, about someone from an alien race who had his legs removed and replaced with fake ones for no reason. It was a few months ago. She called him an 'aesthetic amputee.' He had something to do with Jack the Ripper, I think… uh, how many levels are there, exactly?" He decided to question Tem in order to push their attention away from him. He didn't like having all eyes in his direction.

"Only two. Us, the Level Ones, and… the people downstairs."

"'Downstairs'?"

"This is a little bit of an… unpleasant topic. You should come in, I don't want any of my neighbours to overhear me talking about those, um, Level Zeros," he whispered this, then proceeded to turn on his heel and return to his front door. "Open the door, Max," he ordered somebody who didn't respond. The doors did open, but Adam wouldn't be surprised if Tem was talking to someone who didn't exist, and they were just automatic. Regardless, they followed him inside.

If the lobby of Tem's home was horrifically conceited, his actual living room was even worse. It was enormous, full of ludicrous 'artistic' sculptures, even more screens with either pictures of him or a dozen different TV channels like the giant TV in Back to the Future 2, all playing at once like a cacophony of brainwashing nonsense (he wondered if there was anything good on.) Even worse, at least half of the sculptures were exaggerated recreations of Tem, and usually the exaggerations seemed to be in his 'lower regions.' Except in one, where one of his arms had transformed into a big gun, like he was Megaman.

"Can your arm actually do that?" Adam asked, eyeing it.

"No. We're not allowed weapons in Eutopia Bay."

"My arm can do that," Nios whispered to him as Tem was distracted looking at his own engorged statues.

"Really?" Adam asked, in awe.

"I have built-in night vision, too."

"What? That's so cool!"

"And a jetpack."

"…Are you messing with me?"

"I can toast things between my hands."

"Oswin's rubbing off on you," he muttered, now very disappointed. "Can't believe you would lie about having a jetpack and a Megaman gun." Maybe Nios lying to him for her own amusement was a sign that she liked him? Oswin definitely liked him and she also constantly lied to him for her own amusement, about things equally ridiculous as having a jetpack.

"You should get Oswin to modify your brain chip and turn that into a big gun," Nine quipped.

"Why do you have to bring up that brain chip at every opportunity? I regret it. Wish I'd never done it. Can we forget about it?"

"Forget about the door in your head? Don't think so," said the Doctor, "Now then, Tem, time for more survey questions. Differences between a Level One citizen and a Level Zero."

"Well," Tem stopped looking at pictures of himself flexing, "It's decided based on what we did when we lived on Earth. Then we were selected, and given our levels based on our behaviour."

"And what did you do that was so good to end up rich and living here on your own with a dozen statues of yourself?"

Tem beamed and said, "It's actually more than that, and upstairs I have a chrome fountain. Anyway – Max – tell these camera salespeople I've never seen before about how the levels were decided before we arrived."

"An algorithm," answered a male, disembodied, robotic voice. A circular amber light set into the wall lit up when the voice spoke. It reminded Adam uncomfortably of HAL 4000. "Values were assigned to deeds and positions were allocated based on points." It sounded like Helix, only with even less intonation and emotion, which was really saying something because Helix wasn't programmed to display any emotion.

"So it's a heaven and hell type thing?" Nine asked, "Sheep and goats?" Nios stared suspiciously at the light on the wall, Sprite still hanging onto her back. "Why would anyone come out here if they were going to have to live as one of these 'Level Zeros'?"

"We all have our needs met, still," said Tem, "I think. Max says so. I've never met any of them. They're, uh… you know."

"What?" asked the Doctor.

"Dirty."

"Dirty?" all three of them questioned. That didn't sound politically correct.

The computerised voice, 'Max', then announced an urgent bulletin. All of the TV screens changed at once to be one large, unified image, displaying something also being delivered in an identical robotic, flat voice. The pictures were horrendous; it wasn't hard to recognise a slum, even in outer space. Max was notifying all Level One citizens or a change in severity in some kind of plague outbreak and 'permanent quarantine.' The people in the videos looked gaunt, starving, and maybe a little dirty, but it didn't seem like they had access to basic resources. All Adam could see was gloom and squalor.

"A red alert for tuberculosis and cowpox remains in effect for all Level Ones. In the secondary news, further reports of unexplained deaths related to prosthesis malfunctions-"

"That's enough of that, Max, turn it off. I'm sure these salespeople don't want to be bored hearing about all those Zeros." The screens went dead instantly.

"Sorry, did that thing say tuberculosis? Cowpox? How do you get an outbreak of tuberculosis in space in this century? It should be eradicated, and even if it's not I'm sure it's just a one-pill fix, not even an injection," the Doctor said.

"I told you, they're dirty," Tem shrugged. Adam really didn't like this guy. "Look, if they wanted to be Level Ones as well, all they had to do was be nicer in life."

"What's the nicest thing you've ever done, then?" Nine challenged angrily.

"I returned someone's credit chip."

"A credit chip? That's it? One person's credit chip?"

"They're bad people," Tem reiterated, "Really."

"With the technology you have here for these ridiculous upgrades, and you're letting people die?"

"Can we get on with the survey yet?" Tem tried to change the subject.

"Definitely not. I don't think you deserve a camera. I think the nice Level Zeros might want some cameras," said Nine.

"It's nothing to do with any of us what anybody's allocations are. It's all down to the AI."

"AI?" Nios was surprised. She nodded at the amber light, "That?"

"Max is an AI."

"Interesting," she said, "Doesn't sound like an AI at all." Adam had been thinking the same thing, it sounded no more intelligent than Siri, and only seemed to have opened some doors and turned a TV on.

"What would you know? You sell cameras," said Tem.

"Yes," said Nios stiffly, "You're right. I sell cameras. I don't know anything about AI."

"We're leaving," Nine announced, "No offence, Tem, but you seem like a conceited, selfish moron, and I wouldn't sell you a camera if you were Louis Daguerre. Let's go."

AN: I'm now back PROPERLY and my assessments for my 2nd year of university are all wrapped up, how crazy, and also coming up is the fifth year anniversary of this fic which is probably the most ridiculous thing in all of history. I should explain though that I've been distracted with a few things other than assessments recently - first of all, I actually got another job writing for WatchMojo now (yes, really, it's super cool) and I've been doing it since January but I think just didn't mention. So obviously since I'm a real adult now who has to pay rent like I'm sure a lot of you reading this are too, it's harder to update. Secondly, for the past few months I've also been working on a Clara & Thirteen side-fic I'm going to launch at some point (it's called "Retrograde" and I wrote the entire first storyline which are going to hopefully end up being much longer almost novel-length things like 50k words, and then disrupted my own canon in the main continuity so the majority of it is basically unusable lol) but it's just been hard to balance the main fic and all the side-fics so I've ended up writing tiny bits of each of them and creating nothing substantial which is why nothing's been uploaded, but I'll have more time since I'm free from uni now until October (obviously I still have literally no social life so I'm not planning on going anywhere).

In the other thrilling news of my life, some of you may remember that May 31st is my birthday which was exactly a week ago today and I'm now 20 years old which means that in America it would be just one year until I was old enough to drink alcohol but in the rest of the world the legal drinking age is 18 or younger so it's not really a milestone. And finally I got a tattoo last Saturday which is totally cool if itchy. Two questions: are you guys a) excited about a Clarteen future-set side-fic (which will obviously have your usual alien and time travel shenanigans despite them living on Earth), and b) - do you like Nios and Cohen and their arc? It's just I know nobody cares about Sally Sparrow & James Elliott except me, but I'm intrigued to hear if you like Nios and Cohen.