On Marble Wings

888

"It took a whole platoon but we were able to contain four of the nightmares." the Time Lord officer said as he watched the Lord President press his face against the tempered glass of the large theater that looked down onto a dark void below. The officer was in the traditional Time Lord regalia, his dark skin complemented by the blood red robing and collar.

The Lord President looked like a child at a zoo attempting to see some camouflaged and deadly animal safely trapped in an enclosure. His fingers curled against the glass straining as if he could push himself a few more micrometers closer to the surface somehow the thing inside would make itself apparent to him. The Lord President pushed off of the glass and turned to the officer.

"And they are contained? The systems worked?" The Lord President said with a level of restrained glee.

"It would appear so." the officer responded far less gleefully. "We lost a lot of men on Alfava Metraxis…sir. We weren't sure we'd get out alive. They had overrun the entire world, and were gorging, there wasn't a single native organism on the surface. Some of the soldiers still aren't right…I think they looked too long."

"Give the soldiers memory sterilizers, it should stop the process." The Lord President said as he turned back and looked down into the sheath of event horizon, peering into the something-ful nothing below. "Can we talk to them?"

"Talk? I'm not sure they are even capable of thought…" the officer said, he never looked down below, there was an unsettling feeling he was being watched from the other side of the event horizon. It felt that something predatory was glaring back at him. "They are forces of nature more than actual creatures…"

"No, they are clever, the stories and legends suggest a keen intellect." the Lord President said as he looked down into the darkness. The Lord President cocked his head back. There were others in the room, technicians at computer terminals that thronged the greater gallery. "The oldest legends said they could speak through others…." His eyes fell upon a young male technician. He didn't know the young technicians name and maybe that was for the best. He pursed his lips and turned, and began the walk up the stairs to the level the young lad was working at. "You…what is your job here?"

The young technician looked up in shock and surprise and gulped several times as he stood to attention. "I'm Technician third class, I monitor the power grids for most of the research and development levels of the citadel."

"And you do this on your own?" the Lord President asked his eyes inspecting the young. He was thin, and blonde with new blue eyes. His skin was pale, and smooth. He wore as the other technicians a yellow jumpsuit with the crest of the Lord President on its shoulders. The Lord President flicked his eyes to the technician's terminal spying the multiple flickering bits of graphs and diagrams.

"No, sir, I am part of a team of technicians…part of the fourth division of the Home World Civil Force." The technician reported sharply.

"Home World Civil Force…yes, I have a mission for you." The Lord President said. "I need you to go down into the theater below, and inspect the containment system. I fear it may…have a fault. Now, the event horizon is gravitationally stabilized, so you should be able to pass into it rather safely. I just need to know if the power systems inside the observation envelope are secure." The technician looked at the Lord President hesitantly and then to the Time Lord officer. The Lord President followed the technician's gaze and then back to the technician. "Is there an issue?"

"It's just…that…the…well…aren't they in there?" the technician asked quietly, his voice wavering in fear of some social faux pas or worse some accusation of insubordination.

"My dear lad, what fear does a Time Lord have of such things? You have your time ring with you, no?" the Lord President said congenially, putting a comforting hand onto the technician's shoulder. The technician looked back to the officer, and then back to the Lord President. The Lord President smiled gently and nodded assuringly and finally the technician mirrored his actions.

"I'm sorry, Lord President…" the technician said with a smile. "I'll go right now."

"There's a lad, off you go!" the Lord President said giving the technician an encouraging slap to the back.

The technician nodded and smiled proudly and then quickly bustled from the gallery through a door. The Lord President walked down the stairs again and looked down. The Time Lord officer followed, a little more quickly in stride behind. A little more anxiously he looked down at the theater below.

The officer looked to the President who watched imperiously as the technician entered the theatre with a bag of tools and looked questioningly at the sphere of darkness in front of him. He looked anxiously up to the theater. The Lord President simply nodded, smiled and waved at him trying to coax him along. The technician looked once more at the darkness in front of him and then gulped took a unsure step forward into the event horizon.

"Is this wise?" the Time Lord officer hissed. "Is it necessary. He's young…he has his entire life ahead of him."

"Youth is wasted on the young, the ambitious, in war it is they who are the fodder for the cannons." the Lord President said, as he watched. The technician didn't even lift his second foot as something beyond the veil had yanked him pulling him beyond the observation of the theater. The Lord President turned looking at another technician, a female, young and brunette. "If you would, please patch us into the theater, open up the communication network."

The brunette nodded sharply and patted at the console in front of her. The Lord President turned back to the glass and stared downwards. There was a electric click and then an unfortunate sound. The sound of the young blonde male from before begging and pleading and screaming and cracking as whatever it was that he begging to ignored him and proceeded to break his body in parts and pieces.

There was a sharp gasp as the other technicians all looked up in surprise and started whispering to one another. The Lord President turned scanning the room and as he did the murmurs silenced under their own gravitational weight. The Lord President returned his attention to the theater below. He could hear the screams and then heard the crack, and the final silence. Then there was a noise, it sounded like electronic feedback, lots of hissing and blips and electric chittering. The Lord President cleared his voice.

"To you below, I hope you understand the point of sending down that intermediary." the Lord President paused for a second listening, hearing the chorus of feedback. As it silenced he continued. "I have done much research on you, and suspect you can figure out the situation…"

There was a crescendo of electric whooping and snapping, the pulsing, static equivalent of teeth grinding. Finally they all heard it, and many wished they hadn't, that fleshy squishy sound. A rasp of flesh as if something unfamiliar with the concept of music were trying to strum a banjo made of strings of freshly butchered meat whose juices still clung to the sinews of muscles. It coughed and chortled and sickly warbled in a scratchy sing-songy tone. All of it was just the sociopathic rumblings of a fleshy tuning session that was being conducted by some maniacal infant. The sounds, mercifully or, maybe to some, less mercifully, started to harmonize, started coalescing.

"Re-re-re-….leassse usss, now." the strummed voice finally managed.

"I lost a lot of men getting you here." the Lord President said, staring into the abyss below. "Do you know who I am?"

"D-d-de-d….dead." the voice replied. "We will not be trapped. We will be free, and all will die!"

"I rather doubt that." the Lord President said. "This whole system was designed specifically to hold you."

"We…can….not be contained." the voice said. There was a rumble. In the theater below, the event horizon wobbled. The lights in the gallery blinked and the consoles made error noises and then it stopped.

"I see you're finished with testing." the Lord President said with a smug smile on his face. "You probably realize you are in an observation envelope, inserted inside of a currently inert singularity. You will also have realized that the current stability of the black hole is only being maintained by power systems attached to fault detectors surrounding the theater. If you manipulate the power to the lights, to the monitors, to anything, the envelope closes and you'll be trapped inside that black hole. I know the myths say you are fast but even you aren't fast enough to escape the gravity of the situation you are in."

There was a long gaping expanse of vocal silence suffused with the sound of electronic chittering and angry sound electronic screeches and howls and snares. The Lord President listened to this play out trying to contemplate the meaning of the noises.

"Why are we here, Rassilon?" the fleshy meat voice gurgled.

"It is said that your kind can perceive reality in a way that even we Time Lords cannot." the Lord President said. "I wish to utilize your talents."

"We will not be commanded." the voice retorted. The electric feedback chittered and hissed and popped. "Trap us in this singularity, we will find an escape."

"It is said you are nigh indestructible." The Lord President said quietly. His clasped his chin gently and tapped his lips. "It is however said that you hunger for the energy released during quantum waveform collapse, and one must wonder if something hungers, does it not also eventually starve? I have it within my means to trap you for as long as it takes. Beyond the singularity envelope is an Argus observation array that is constantly monitored, constantly under recording, the recording is then put through a memory shredder. Even if you escaped the singularity we'd still have you trapped long enough to re-contain you."

There was an eerie silence on the other end of the intercom.

"Time Lord pride…is their downfall," the voice responded, "but we will indulge you."

"You must be aware of the current conditions." The Lord President replied.

"The vortex blazes!" The voice replied almost in complete ecstasy. "You and your enemy burn reality! Time lines are being folded into oblivion. We bathe in the blood of billions of extinguished hopes, we gnaw on the bones of those who will never have known existence. We feast upon the rotting essences of your soldiers who have never been and who will never be. Our numbers increase as chaos roars across reality. Not since the first light have we gorged on such a plentiful bounty! A cacophony of madness in the wilds and the fire."

The Lord President's eyes narrowed slightly as he listened to the near joy of the voice. He took a deep breath and continued. "Then you must know that we must see the war, all of it, every bit of it. You will tell us what you see."

"We see…the fires quelled. Soon, the roaring madness lost, replaced with silence." the voice whispered. "Our brothers and sisters bloated from the war will become thin and hungry…"

"You see our victory!" A spreading grin formed on the Lord President's face.

"The Gods of the Fourth will fall in the flames, burned in the wrath and anger they created." the voice retorted. "Daleks and Time Lords will be silenced….but we see one survivor in the smoldering rubble walking away…."

"Who is it? Who survives?" the Lord President asked urgently.

"His name is lost to us, he has revoked it in disgust at the things that have happened, at the things that will happen…but we see in the halls of silence he creates that he reclaims that which he threw away…" the voice said.

"Who is it?" the Lord President implored.

"He is was known and will be known as the Doctor…."

"No!" the Lord President growled, as he stormed to the glass and smashed an angry fist against the cold surface. "Impossible…how can such a fool survive when I die. I cannot die!"

"We see it, Rassilon." the voice said. "We foresee a time in which we survive to watch you die in rage and fear and wrath….."

The Lord President growled, staring into the abyss as he listened to the electric warbles and chattering twitters and whooping crescendos. Even he could interpret the sounds as nothing more than laughter at him.

"There must be another way." the Lord President hissed.

"The survivor will see the downfall of Time Lord and Dalek alike." whispered the voice. The electric feedback was gleeful in its static. "You will die and we shall live."

"Not if the survivor dies before he commits his atrocity." the Lord President whispered. His growling face slowly lifting.

"Endless flames…" the voice gurgled. "War unending…the vortex shattered, chaos across time and space…"

"And the Time Lords ascend…beyond the reach of these physical dimensions…" The Lord President whispered, a plan forming in his mind. "But we have to catch him, and kill him. It's been tried before but he's, clever." The Lord President stared into the darkness. "But even one like him cannot contest against the forces of nature. If you kill this one known as the Doctor we will give you the leftovers of the universe."

Another gasp, hissing whispers in the gallery coming from the technicians. The Lord President glared at the gaggle of Time Lords, but this time they continued to murmur. The officer came to the Lord President's side.

"This is moving beyond acceptability." hissed the officer. "The High Council will never allow it…to kill even a renegade even in war time. Especially considering who it is…he has too many associates. He is too much of a hero in the eyes of others."

"He is a traitor, a criminal of the highest order on multiple occasions." The Lord President replied. He cast a look down into the theater below. "Plus, this is why we outsource the work, plausible deniability…I can't help it if the Doctor falls prey to monsters."

"The rest of the plan though…" the officer hissed.

"Clearly this is a final solution to the war…if we can win without destroying reality we will." The Lord President whispered waving his hand. "That's how we sell it. If we can destroy the Daleks without these histrionics we will, but if we can't, better we survive and the rest of the universe burn than let the Daleks win, no?"

"I…well…" the officer hesitated, flummoxed by the proposition. He looked at the Lord President perplexed.

"We all knew that the war could come to this, are you willing to push the button?" The Lord President said, forcefully. "I can always find another general, another commander. Are you with me, are you willing to see Gallifrey rise, or would you be willing to let Gallifrey fall?"

"You know my loyalty is to you, my lord." the officer said, tilting his head. "I helped your forces take the Panopticon during the end of ex-President Romana's reign."

"I knew I could trust you." The Lord President said slapping the officer's back. The Lord President turned back to the darkness below. "You, down there, if you destroy the Doctor, we will give you an endless feast. You can gorge upon the disemboweled universe forever….but you must eliminate this Doctor."

There was much chittering and electric feedback on the intercom. Finally, the voice gurgled. "We will hunt the Doctor. We will feast upon his timeline…"

"Marvelous…" the Lord President said smiling quietly. "As a sign of good faith I will free you to find the Doctor…" the Lord President turned to the technicians. "Shut down the peripheral observation systems, darken a sector of Gallifreyan sky, our guests are leaving."

The technicians all looked at each other. The Lord President narrowed his eyes and the technicians quickly jumped to action. The Lord President turned and looked to the now darkened theater. He walked close to the glass, and as he peered into the abyss for the briefest of seconds a stone, taloned hand pounded on the glass on the other sided, causing the Lord President and everyone in the gallery to leap backwards.

The Time Lord officer gulped and looked to the Lord President. "Can you trust them?"

"I trust their gluttony." the Lord President said a malevolent smile played across his lips. "An entire universe to gorge themselves upon is a prize too great to toss away, even if it means swallowing a little of their pride. Once we ascend it doesn't matter, they will be incapable of doing anything to us."

888

A young cop was listening to his radio on Earth in the early morning in London, in the first portions of the 21st century. A youngish man in a brown pin-striped suit walked past his car with a young black woman following behind him quickly.

"There's it goes again, 'ding' there's stuff I'm telling you…" the man said to the woman as they passed the cop's opened window.

The cop didn't catch the rest of the conversation as the radio started to go crazy with loud, chittering warbles and electric feedback. The officer glared at the radio and twiddled with the knobs, but the feedback seemed to be on every channel. The officer grumbled as he looked up. He had been on this beat for several years now, and yet he never seemed to remember the four angel statues standing on the walls that surrounded the estate. Even stranger yet they all seemed to be pointing in the same direction, one hand covering their eyes, the other extended pointing. the officer shook his head and looked down at the radio. As he did so suddenly the feedback disappeared, the officer shook his head in exasperation and looked up, the statues were gone.

"I have to get off this night shift gig, by the end of it I swear I see things." The officer said as he reached over to a cup holder with a thermos of coffee in it.