The Measure of a Child
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She sat at the table. She looked over to her son. She smiled softly at the young boy as he played with the quantum loops. She heard the door open. Toval walked into the room. It had been years since their return to Gallifrey, they had been reprimanded and lost their position in the xenobiology research institute. During the crisis they had each other, and Azkineet their son. They fell in love and now they were married. Toval looked to their son and then to Rosat. She stood looking up with hope. Toval simply shook his head.
"The Registrar is resolute." Toval said quietly.
He turned his head to the child. The boy looked up at Toval. The reptilian scales that covered his flesh glistened in the lights of the room. The small ridge of spikes that rose from his rostrum over his frontal ridge were still pink from the last shedding.
"But President Romana ordered-" She said.
"The Registrar stated that he is independent of any governmental edict. That he had a higher order from the times of Rassilon to protect the Academy of Time Lords. That as administrator of the academy he was not going to make the mistakes of the past, no non-Gallifreyans will be allowed." Toval shook his head. "Rosat, we knew it was a long shot. We don't have a choice, we will simply have to teach Azkineet here…"
"Without accreditation though-" She looked to the child, his large green eyes looked back at her, the vertical slits widened in glee as she gave him a faint smile. "He'll live a life of a Shabogan…he'll never be-"
"It's different now, I know several who are not academy accredited and they live very comfortable lives-" Toval replied.
"Ignorant and busy." Rosat spat.
A chime in the apartment rang. She looked up to Toval. He looked quizzically to the door and turned and walked to the entrance into their apartment. He almost instantly flustered and bowed as a man in flowing red robes glided into the room.
"Lord Balzaran!" Rosat gasped and dropped her head down as he strode effortlessly into the room.
"Oh, do stand!" The man grunted as he looked to the two of them. He had light grey hair, with flecks of sand in it. His skin was warm and rosy. He was rotund even his robes, though they most masterfully flowed, did not hide this fact. He turned to Azkineet and smiled as he twiddled his fingers towards the child. "Most amazing, so this is the boy, hmm?"
"Yes, Lord-"
"Zarry will do." the man in the red robes said, as he made faces to the child and turned to Rosat.
"His name is Azkineet-" Toval said as he walked behind the Time Lord and pulled out a chair inviting the elder man to sit.
"Ah, yes, of course." Lord Balzaran said nodding as he sat down. "Kralyvinian, most amazing, not many of you left now what with the Daleks going nuts out there…" The man looked to the child as the child looked at him most mutely, slightly cocking his head to one side. Lord Balzaran looked to Rosat. "Does he, does he speak?"
"Of course!" Rosat said with a note of indignation. "Azkineet dear, would you like to speak with our guest?"
The boy looked from his mother to the old man. The old man smiled most warmly. The child then looked to Toval, his father, who nodded encouragingly.
"Go ahead, introduce yourself." Toval said.
"He-hello-" Azkineet said as he walked forward. "My name is Azkineet, I am pleased to meet your acquaintance."
"Extraordinary!" The man bellowed a laugh. Azkineet retreated slightly from the explosion of laughter. "Gosh darn near perfect Gallifreyan!" The man turned to Rosat and smiled most broadly. "A miracle if I ever did see one!"
"Gallifrey is the only home he's known, Gallifreyan is the only language he's ever heard, Lord-" the man frowned and Rosat stuttered, "-uh Zarry. It is not unexpected for the child to learn the only language he's heard all his life."
Lord Balzaran's face became stern and he nodded. "Yes, I suppose you're right!" He turned to the boy. "I sincerely apologize old fellow, how ignorant and unwise it was of me!"
Azkineet's left eyebrow arched and he looked from Rosat to Toval. Toval lifted his hand, which Rosat had come to realize was his signal for Azkineet to keep any comment to himself until later when they were alone.
"What has brought a person such as yourself, lead of the Technology Institute, to our humble apartment?" Toval asked as he sat down at the table next to the man in the long red robes.
"Right, well you know how the capital is…" The older man said flustering a ice breaking. Rosat and Toval looked at each other and then to Lord Balzaran. Lord Balzaran sniffed slightly and then came to the realization that neither had been to the capital in their entire life. "Right, well, gossip is rampant, rampant through the place a den of rats is what it is…nattering gossiping rats…and I came upon a story about your dear son and the quite amazing circumstances of his um, well…" The man looked to the reptilian boy and then back to the parents and then back to the boy as if he was searching for some correct phrase and then gave up, "…becoming I guess is the best word." The man looked to the boy as the child resumed playing with the quantum loops. "Ah, yes, used to love me some quantum loops, used to be quite good, got to level nine you know…yes…"
"Only level nine, sir?" The boy asked bluntly with a quizzical look on his face as the boy arched one loop through another and curled the three together performing an intricate design that resolved into a slinking mammalian form before transforming into a perfect replica of the Crystal Gardens of Mooth. The old man started to fluster quite noticeably as he watched quantum representations of lepidopteramorph life flutter through the crystal flowers.
"Oh he is quite adept." Toval said as he got up and swept between the child and Lord Balzaran. "Maybe though, Azkineet, you should go play in your room, the adults have some talking to do."
"I tell you they are half wizards at that age aren't they?" Lord Balzaran said as he watched Azkineet scurry off towards his room with the quantum loops a small quantum simulacrum of a the butterfly flitting behind him. Lord Balzaran looked towards the room that Azkineet had ran to as the door shut and he snapped out of his thoughts. "Yes, quite surprising…"
"You heard of our case?" Rosat said as she tried to refocus the Time Lord.
"Hmm? Oh, yes, everyone who's anyone has." Lord Balzaran said as he turned and threaded his fingers together. "When the President speaks, well, everyone hears, one way or another."
"Except apparently the Registrar of the academy." Toval said as he sat down and crossed his arms over his chest.
"Ah, yes, the Registrar…" Lord Balzaran said, nodding. "He's new, well, recently arrived. I believe he's one of the old buzzards from Gurrick's clique, conservative as they come, doesn't care for how the President does things." Lord Balzaran sighed quietly. "Unfortunately when it comes to the academy he has unfettered power. If the old fool says no aliens, no aliens get in."
"Yes, he made that abundantly clear." Toval grumbled.
"Surely you aren't here simply to tell us things we already know!" Rosat said expectantly.
"Hmm?" The old man furrowed his eyebrows. "Ah, yes, here's the deal, the old man's quite right. There's no stomach in the council to refight that old thing what with the lumpy-dumps causing problems out in the outer temporum. No, not much stomach for that kind of fight, and the courts aren't all that interested either, unfortunately the Registrar has some firm footing in old Rassilonian law…."
"So it is hopeless." Rosat slumped back in her chair.
"Hmm?" The Time Lord frowned and looked to Rosat. "I dare say, young madam, you don't give up half too easily. I looked into the tests the school masters gave the boy, astonishing, he's better than half of the Gallifreyan kids that get in and go on to be on the High Council! His abilities for illogical logic alone were outstanding yes, if he were a Gallifreyan by biology, not only would he be in academy he'd be halfway through his first thesis in Rongstrum's Tri-fold Temporal Theory…"
"But he isn't Gallifreyan by biology." Toval said sternly. "At least, not genetically speaking, we weren't Gallifreyan when he was conceived."
"Ah yes, the chameleon arch-" Lord Balzaran said quietly, nodding. "Pity that, the boy's a genius, apparently, regardless of the genetic realties, good parentage can just as easily create genius." The old Time Lord took a long deep breath through his nose and then looked up. "What if I told you that I can get your boy into the academy?"
"You just said that the Registrar-" Rosat started.
"I said, that if the old buzzard said no aliens, then no aliens." Lord Balzaran said, a slow, sly smile curled on the old man's rosy face. "I never said the boy couldn't be in the academy…"
"But he isn't a-" Toval shook his head.
"He is a child of Gallifrey. Yes, his skin is Kralyvinian, but that's just a desktop theme, eminently editable." The old man said flourishing a hand. Lord Balzaran looked to the two parents and furrowed his eyebrows and then exasperation huffed. "If the chameleon arch caused the problem, I presume that the chameleon arch will fix the problem!"
"Could that work?" Toval asked. "Does that even make sense? It took us years to get enough observational information to properly map the Kralyvinian bio-form into our arches. To do the reverse without a default template-"
"My dear boy, we have the entire matrix filled with old, Gallifreyan templates…" Lord Balzaran laughed clapping his hand on Toval's back. "We'll just borrow some bio-data to provide a morphic scaffold for the boy. We pop him into a chameleon arch and then out he comes Gallifreyan, born and raised, complete and whole, enough for that dusty old buzzard to not notice the difference!"
"That's…that's amazing!" Toval cheered loudly. He looked over to Rosat.
"But will he still be Azkineet?" Rosat asked quietly. "Or will he be whatever he is overwritten as."
"I'm sure we can edit in whatever kind of personality you want into the child." Lord Balzaran said nodding.
"I want him to be Azkineet, as he is now, with all of those memories, I don't want him to be some strange Gallifreyan boy…" Rosat said looking up at Lord Balzaran.
"Rosat, this could be the only way our boy can go into the academy!" Toval said. He held her hands in his. "He'll always be our boy. We just have to make sure he passes the smell test…"
"He passed all the tests, his 'smell' isn't the problem, it's the old birds in power who need to have their noses examined!" Rosat shouted. She jumped up from her chair. "Maybe it's not just them, Toval!"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Toval yelped.
"You're awfully keen to see our little boy transformed into some…some…" Rosat shook her head in anger, clenching her fists. "Thing!"
"A Gallifreyan child….our child, Rosat."
"Our child, is in his room playing!" Rosat shouted. She huffed and puffed as she glared at Toval. "You never accepted him, really, as your son, you wanted to leave-"
"That was then, I was dumb, groggy from the arch, for Pythia's sake, Rosat, I can't believe you'd think I don't love him!" Toval closed his eyes and covered his face with his hand. He looked up at Rosat and reached forward and grabbed her hands. "This is about giving him every chance he can have to survive. This battle is too big for us to fight! If we want him to get academy accreditation, we have to do this. Even if we teach him, he'll be an alien living on Gallifrey; he'll never ever be able to enjoy any kind of life here or out there. I wish we lived in a world where we could just admit him without problems but we don't." Toval turned to Lord Balzaran. "I won't let them erase our son, I'll be there, making sure that the only difference will be how he scans biologically." He looked back to Rosat. "This is what we need to do. For Azkineet…"
"Obviously, if you need time-" Lord Balzaran said quietly.
"You can promise that my son comes back to me, as my son?" Rosat asked, looking to the old Time Lord.
"It should be a minor edit." Lord Balzaran said nodding.
"I will be there at every step of the way." Toval said, looking to his wife. "I promise, I won't let them change an electron of encoded memory…"
"Madame, what more can you hope for but the security of your son's future?" Lord Balzaran asked.
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Rosat held Azkineet in her arms. The boy was reading quietly in her lap. She looked around the waiting room. These were universal fixtures of every society, designed to be exceptionally disarming, numbing, boring. Ancient texts, long obsolete were on the shelves, child's playthings were on a table in the middle of the room. A tank with small living creatures swimming in the water hummed quietly in a corner. Even the lighting was soft and calming. A nurse walked in, she smiled politely to her. She explained what she was going to do and gently put a tab on Azkineet's exposed shoulder. Within minutes the boy was asleep. A group of technicians including Toval wheeled a bed in and Toval gently took Azkineet and laid him on the bed.
Rosat stood and pressed herself forward and looked down at the little boy. She leaned down and gently kissed his scaly cheek. She felt Toval's hand on her shoulder.
"Don't worry, we found an amazing template for Azkineet, brilliant, one of the smartest ones in his class." Toval assured as the technicians started wheeling the boy away. "I've gotta go, don't worry, he'll be back to you before you even realize he's gone."
Rosat paced the entire hour. She never knew of an arching that took so long. Most only took seconds. She kept thinking of the thousands of things that could've went wrong. The horrible abominations that could come rolling out of that room. The door opened finally and Rosat spun around to see Toval walking towards her.
"Well?" Rosat asked looking fervently around for the little boy.
"There were some complications-" Toval said quietly. "Nothing like this has ever really been done before, there was some…issues with the template taking up Azkineet's data."
"Oh, no…" Rosat started.
"But but," Toval said as she grabbed the slumping Rosat. "We did it, he's sleeping off the anesthetic…"
"Can I see him?" Rosat asked.
"Of course, come on this way." Toval said jovially.
He led her through the doors and to a recuperation room. She looked down at the boy. He was a stranger. Brown hair, with pale, peach colored skin. His chest slowly rose and fell under a black robe that trailed down over his feet. The only thing about the child that suggested anything was a small series of exceptionally faint birthmarks that ran along his forehead from the bridge of his nose. The boy took a deep breath through his nose and slowly his eyes flickered open.
"Mo-momma?" the boy asked as he looked up at Rosat. His eyebrows furrowed as he listened to himself. "What's, what's wrong with my voice? I feel…" He lifted his hands and looked at them. The boy sat up suddenly. "Momma, Papa! I have skin like you!"
"That's right, Azkineet!" Toval cheered loudly as he hugged the boy. "We got you a new body!"
"Does that mean I can go to school like the other children?" the boy asked.
"You bet, my boy!" Toval said nodding.
The boy furrowed his brow. He looked around him curiously.
"What's wrong, Azkineet?" Toval asked quietly.
"You don't hear that?" The boy asked, he closed his eyes and put his hands to his ears. "It's a beating…that beating in my ears…"
Toval smiled quietly. "That's your hearts beating, you're old body had a series of arterial bladders strategically positioned, but Time Lord bodies have a pair of muscular hearts." the boy looked at his father and slowly started to smile. Toval hugged the boy. "Don't worry, my boy, soon you'll get accustomed to the sound…"
The boy looked over to his mother. Rosat couldn't look the boy in his eyes. She looked away.
"Momma?" the boy's voice flew to her ears. "Momma, is something wrong?"
It wasn't her son. It didn't look like the baby she took from that Kralyvinian crib, it wasn't the toddler she trained how to use the bathroom, it didn't even have the voice that spoke her child's first words. She swallowed and opened her eyes and looked to the boy. The child's eyes were worried, afraid, looking for approval. Something inside of those brown eyes reminded her of the clever little boy she'd only just an hour ago had talked to about how gravity worked. Her heart melted as she looked into the boy's eyes.
"Nothing's wrong, Azkineet." Rosat said as she reached down and hugged the boy close. "My Azkineet…you'll always be my Azkineet…"
888
"Lord Balzaran, the procedure was a success then?" a man in black robes asked as he looked to the rotund old man.
"I believe so, the surface is of course of the Kralyvinian child's mind. The parents suspect nothing is amiss…" the old man said quietly, "but I believe eventually the matrix's template will surface and dominate. It is a shame that we have to go through this, but the madman would get himself killed, wouldn't he?"
"Let us hope that we can temper his obsessions this time." the man in the black robes said. "We were fortunate to find a disposable child to use for the restoration…"
"Will he thank us though?" Lord Balzaran asked as he looked at the screen watching as Toval and Rosat walked out of the hospital with their little boy. "It's hardly fitting, a Time Lord body arched from such a lowly source…."
"He was always looking for a new life, I rather think we've given it to him, don't you?" the man in black said. "Plus he'll never know, the biodata is sound, he'll even be able to regenerate…."
"I suspect you're right. Well, then, I guess it's only a question of waiting then." Lord Balzaran said.
"War is coming Lord Balzaran, we need a warrior to fight in it, and with this child, we will have our perfect killing machine…" The man in black said quietly as he flicked a switch and turned off the screen. "This child will be our secret weapon. Never shall we stand in fear!" The man in black stood and put his hand over one of his hearts. "For Gallifrey!"
"For Victory!" Lord Balzaran replied putting his hand on his chest.
"For EVER!" the two men called.
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AN: This is a continuation of a chapter I wrote a while back…jeesh in May, sorry for lack of posts, this format however was designed specifically for something like this…thanks to those who have been patient.