Defense
"Now, just answer the questions, and we'll get you through." His teacher said quietly as he opened the door. "And please, don't embarrass me; I've spent most of the year getting this arranged, not easy considering your final grades…"
The young man nodded as he looked up to the older gentleman in the long lavender robes, the royal purple skull cap covering his fading brunette hair. The great frill that curled around his neck seemed to catch the poor lighting of the room and in doing so showed off the golden threading that was patterned against the lavender.
The room beyond the door was dark, save for a bright light that exposed a high bench, behind which were six elderly people, a woman with silver hair in red robes, an old man in green robes, a fat woman in azure robes, a thin hawkish looking man in robes of heliotrope, a younger looking woman with sharp cold blue eyes like a sword's blade who wore a gently pink robe with mauve patterns and the man sitting in the middle of the group on the highest seat glaring down at the young man. The large regal frill encompassing his head was black with silver edging and his robes were gray; his brown eyes narrowed as he looked down at the young man and then the young man's teacher.
"Borusa, I hope you realize that this is a favor…" The man in gray said with a deep rumbling voice, "to gather us; for this at this time, in this way. Most unusual."
"Of course Magistrate General…" The young man's teacher said bowing.
There was a sharp, glancing jab of ancient, bony knuckles into the left kidney of the young man and the young man jerked forward bowing; his orange robes tumbling around his feet on the ground as he shifted uncomfortably trying and failing not to look up.
"From the records, this one should not even be here." Surmised the woman in pink. "Multiple infractions, that business in the matrix cloisters….most unfortunate." She looked up and over to her compatriots. "Has that young man recovered yet?"
"No, I think he's still in a catatonic state." Said the man in heliotrope as he leaned forward on the bench and threaded his fingers together and steepling them as he looked down at the young man. "Of course the prefect nearly died, and had we not administered an emergency regenerative therapy, he may have…"
"To think, death at the age of 80….only a baby!" the large woman in azure said, her hands cupped in front of her ample bosom, wringing in discomfort. "What would they say on the news, 'Infant Mortality Sky Rockets in the Capital'…most unbecoming…"
"I know Galthea, I know…" The man in green said, he rubbed his piggish nose and squinted looking down at the young man. "And now, our dear peer would ask us to adjudicate this young one, to see if he can graduate and assume a title, after said ceremonies have been done. He is lucky enough not be dispersed for his egregious crimes!"
"Now, now, Rorick…" the woman in red said, as she tapped the palm of her hand on the bench, a large ring on her left hand tapping metallically on the wooden bench. "He is not here to be judged on any crimes. He is here to defend his education, and that most assuredly cannot be biased by his…unfortunate choices…"
"Leave it to Corritha to defend her Prydonian house…." The man in green said laughing and shaking his head.
"Yes, yes, but she has a point, if I may be so, direct." Borusa said as he stepped forward. "This is not about the boy's behavior as…" He turned and looked to the young man, "frustrating as it is." Borusa turned to the barristers. "This proceeding is to judge his level of education and whether or not he has come to fully comprehend what it is that he will become."
"Then let us discharge of the matter then." The man in gray said, as he picked up a thin clear sheet of something like plastic but most decidedly not plastic. Lights flickered over its surface. "The last fifteen years you have been working on a thesis. May I inquire as to the nature of this thesis?"
"Yes, I suppose, you must." The young man said, and he smiled, a twinkle in his eyes.
"Now is not the time for humor, young one." The man in gray said, his eyes glancing over the clear sheet, his voice was soft but the portents of the tone was like a gust of cold wind before the storm broke. "Tell me, then what the thesis was on?"
"The, well, the general historical prevalence of evil in the universe…" The young man said quietly.
"Evil?" The man in green asked, shaking his head and furrowing his brow. He looked to Borusa. "Come now, Borusa, you drag us all here, long after graduation commencement and you subject us to-"
The man in gray raised his hand. "Now, Rorick, do not cut the rope too soon. The lad hasn't yet drawn enough to hang himself with it yet…."
The young man looked back to Borusa and gave him a quizzical grimace. Borusa didn't even look to the young man but simply to the group of barristers.
"Evil, then, how did you define it?" The man in heliotrope asked, leaning back and looking down upon the young man over his sharp, hawkish nose.
"Classically it is defined as the unnecessary exercise of cruelty upon other sapients or near-sapients for the purposes of petty gain, or less." The young man said, straightening up.
"And how, if I may ask, did you adjudicate the 'necessity' or in this case the 'unnecessity' of 'cruelty'?" The woman in blue asked, in a sharp and frustrated tone.
"I surveyed the universe's civilizations and approximated a general guideline based upon moral code and determined rights and freedoms…" the young man said as he took a cautious step forward. "I catalogued over a billion civilizations from across the universe from every mode and make of culture and biology. Everything from the gaseous Zatorick of Galvana, to the Kastrians of Kastria to the alien Voord of Voord to shape-shifting Zolfa-Thurans of well…Zolfa-Thura."
"Yes yes, we can see you put a lot of work into listing things." The woman in pink said shaking her head. "Yet, you have not said how you defined basic terms of this thesis!"
"If your sagacities would allow the young lad to explain…" Borusa said, with a faint grumble that the young man had recognized long ago, as frustration with idiocy, "I am sure he will," Borusa turned to the young man, "get to the point."
"I applied a computer matrix algorithm to the assorted civilizations to find a baseline of what could generally be conceived as 'cruelty' and it is fairly consistent with what we would consider cruel, unnecessary depravation, taking away of assorted rights, infliction of suffering and pain without reason." The young man said. "I obviously had to make some caveats for some confounds…for instance the multiple versions of cybernetic life that has convergently evolved in the universe from say Mondas…their modality of 'logic' is so outside of the mainstream as to serve as a statistical outlier. Likewise for some organic civilizations, for instance one I found on the Planet of Skaro, has such an extreme sense of nationalistic zeal, it's hard to parse out their true moral compass. This isn't helped by the extreme war they are fighting with another nation state on their planet."
"I have overlooked your algorithm in preparation of this, examination." The woman in red said quietly. "It is quite impressive."
"Thank you." The young man said smiling, which quickly turned to a not smile as Borusa coughed very noticeably then sniffed loudly giving the boy a side-long glance. "I mean, I am sure it is not complete and requires years of further study, and like I said I was unable to incorporate every civilization…"
"I presume then you had a similar problem with major powers, like say, the Sontarans?" The man in green said quietly.
"Actually, surprisingly, no, whilst yes everything they do is filtered through an unbridled war-time appropriation, their moral codes do not lie excessively outside of codes of similar military species such as the Ice Warriors of the Sol system or the Draconians…" the young man said, turning to the man in green. "It represents one of the major surprises that I found in this survey."
"Yes, well, then please elucidate these 'major surprises'." The man in gray said coughing as he kept his eyes on the sheet of clear material in front of him. "It says here that the prevalence of evil is actually quite small."
"Yes, my hypothesis was that evil would be, ostensibly everywhere." The young man said quietly. "In fact the hypothesis would be that evil should be the predominant modality of being across all civilizations…"
"And your findings were that this is not the case?" The man in heliotrope said as he looked down at the bench clearly reading from something.
"Yes." The young man said quietly.
"Why did you believe that the hypothesis would bear out this rather than the alternative?" The man in gray asked.
"Evil on the surface appears to be the most efficient means of success from a biological standpoint." The young man said as he slowly started to pace. Borusa harrumphed but the young man continued. "It embraces a survival of the fittest mentality, that uses all tricks, traits and advantages to expand and acquire resources, whereas its counterpart very much does the opposite, to the extent that 'good' will physically sacrifice its being to protect even the evil…so it seems quite impossible that what I found is capable of happening under a natural regime…"
"And yet, it has…" The woman in blue said leaning forward and looking at the screen in front of her in interest. "Very surprising…"
"And yet, I see no application for this." The man in green said. "It's a curious phenomena but it is not of use to us or anyone to realize it."
"Except, I've been delving into the histories of all these civilizations…and they are almost notable for the hallmark that they go from a much more aggressive standpoint to a far more docile one." The young man said, stopping and looking to the man in green. "They go from a state of incurring cruelty on others as a means of acquiring resources to using diplomacy, every one of them even the Sontarans are far less….aggressive than they were in their prehistory. It's almost as if there is a universal force that trends towards empathy and kindness and away from hatred and cruelty. If we could discern that mechanism, figure out how good overcomes evil…repeatedly. We could…"
"We could what?" The man in gray said, his tone transitioning from the cold wind prior to a storm to the thunder that advertises the storm's arrival.
"We could seed the universe, accelerate the progression." The young man said, slowly turning his head to the man in gray.
The other barristers fell to a sharp silence. Their eyes looked down at the young man, and then glaring at Borusa and then looking to the man in gray.
"Young man, what is the purpose behind the Time Lords?" The man in gray asked, his voice cracking with mental lightning.
"We observe history, and in the observation maintain causality, sustaining the order in the winds of chaos." The young man replied, almost from rote, it was one of the first lessons in the Academy. "We bear witness to the beginnings and ends of things, to hold the account, binding them safely at their loosest ends."
"I see, he hasn't forgotten then." The man in gray said, sharply, looking at the young man but speaking to Borusa. The voice changed direction towards the young man. "I had feared you were suggesting that the Lords of Time were meant to interfere with the universe."
"We have great power, and we observe such sorrow-" The young man started.
"Sigma…all you need to do is finish your thesis discussion." Borusa hissed under his breath at the boy. "Don't…"
"That is not our fault." The man in green stated.
"And yet…if one can end suffering, should one not attempt it?" The young man asked.
"Borusa, surely you made sure this young one has been to his history classes." The man in heliotrope said as he leaned forward. "Or did he fail those as well, he surely hasn't forgotten about Minyos…"
"The events that resulted in the disaster on Minyos were not because we interfered, but because we did so inartfully, and followed that by abandonment and abdication of our responsibilities!" The young man replied to a statement not wholly directed at him.
Borusa reached out to grab the young man's arm, but the young man evaded the grasp and walked to the bench.
"It contravenes the laws of Rassilon at the very core of their foundation!" The man in green retorted.
"But Rassilon broke his own rules, did he not? Did he not unleash the Great Vampires on the universe? Did he not interfere in the Time Wars of the Halldon and the Eternals, or the slaughter of the Omnicraven Uprising?" The young man replied, looking at the barristers. "Why was it fine then, and not when it could save billions of civilizations? We could find a means of ending the Sontaran-Rutan war; end a suffering that's been going on now for fifty thousand years. We've tried in the past, sending ambassadors and mediators…but what if we could-"
"Utilize some natural force, to force them into a peace against their will?" The man in gray asked. "And where would this stop, young one? When do we cross the line from bringers of peace and sanity to dictators of kindness?"
"We would simply be accelerating what the universe is doing naturally…" the young man replied. "We'd simply be cutting out the millennia of suffering and bloodshed for nothing more than petty indiscretions."
"Disrupting billions of civilizations' histories, altering causality on a scale that would shake the universe." The man in gray stated in response. "You are not the first student to come this way and suggest we utilize our technology and knowledge to leverage a 'positive change' in the overall universe."
"If our sole purpose is to watch others suffer, I'm not sure I want the title." The young man said as he turned from the barristers. The young man looked to Borusa. "I'm sorry, but maybe my family was right, I'll never make Time Lord…."
The young man continued to walk away and reached the door opening and leaving the room.
"Well, that was a wasted morning." Grumbled Rorick. "Borusa, next time you drag us here after hours, make sure we don't waste our time."
"Waste your time?" Borusa asked, looking up at the group of Time Lords. "The market share on your time is so low, it may as well be worthless; how can you waste something for which you have had so much of it? An hour out of your millennia is not a waste; it's a grain of sand and worth as much."
"Borusa!" yelped the woman in blue.
"You cannot possibly think this child's dangerous philosophy warrants us giving him a degree or even warrants us even questioning if he deserves a degree!" The man in heliotrope snorted. "He has fundamentally rejected the core tenet of what it means to be a Time Lord!"
"We've all seen the premonitions coming out of the matrix archives." Borusa said, folding his hands behind his back. "We cannot stand apart from the universe forever. One way or another it will break upon our shores like a tidal wave; either we work to utilize the tide or we let it wash us away. This lad is the cleverest boy in my class."
"His exams don't bare-" The man in green started.
"I remember your exams Rorick, how many of them were passed by a discreet side-long look over your neighbor's shoulder?" Borusa said sharply, glaring at the man in green. "I watched him reconstruct a time scaphe; using bits of office material and an acquired chronon flux inhibitor!"
"Yes, a time scaphe that exploded when he tried to go backwards into Gallifrey's past!" The man in gray said angrily.
"Also, finally, we admit to where that flux inhibitor had gotten to, I knew I hadn't mislaid it…" The man in heliotrope said, narrowing his eyes.
"It would've worked, mind you, had the Gallifreyan defense systems not sheered the temporal torsion around his entropic horizon field…" The woman in pink said.
"Dasar, you say exploded, it simply experienced an existential discrepancy and failed to exist, the boy fell out of the sky and landed in a bush near the commissary about forty seconds before he took off." The woman in red said, as she drummed her fingers on the bench. "Less an explosion more of a whiff of never existing…"
"His technical skill is not up for debate." The man in gray groused. "Being a Time Lord is more than simply knowing how to throw together a bit of tech and rushing off on adventures. It is an ethic and responsibility, and he has shown here, now, that he does not possess the understanding of that!"
"I don't know…" The woman in blue said as she looked down at the thesis documents in front of her. "His premise isn't inherently flawed. It is suspicious how often evil seems to be vanquished, sometimes out of nowhere. If such a force can be levied for the betterment of the universe, the alternative is also possibly true."
"You cannot possibly be suggesting that we-" Rorick started.
"If there is a power to leverage, would you rather it was us with the power or some other thing…out there!" The woman in blue replied waving her hand in the air at the words 'out there'. "I'm not particularly keen to see a 'beam of evil intent' fired at Gallifrey because we were too precious to bother giving an otherwise competent young man…"
"Competent young man?" The man in heliotrope asked angrily. "He's irresponsible, dangerous, mad and…"
"Exactly what the Time Lords need." Borusa said quietly. "His class has had an exceedingly large number of rabble rousers. All of them. All. Of. Them. Were graduated by this council, this year. All of them are irresponsible, lest we forget the business with the President's cat? Or that business with the stolen Transduction coils? Or that false alarm when one of the young ones seemingly attempted to take over Delva 3, by establishing a shadow invasion by a fictitious race of automatons called the Magisterial Council of Silicon?" Borusa turned to where the young man had gone through the door. "The young man that was before you is by far the most compassionate of that lot. If you allow them to pass because of their exams, their ambition, their dispassionate commitment to the science, then you must allow him in because of his compassion and competent ability. You all have no problem with the thesis work in and of itself from a scientific or analytical standpoint, you only dislike the policy suggestions…which is something that the bureaucracy will squeeze out of him eventually, but if those others in his class show half the propensity to go rogue that I fear they have, you have no choice but to let him through so we can at least have one of the mad ones on our side of things."
"And if he goes rogue himself?" The man in green asked.
"Rorick, if he goes rogue, it may be the best thing to ever happen to the universe." Borusa said, looking to the man in green.
"Enough. I didn't think we would be doing this today, or at all, but it sounds like we will actually have to vote on this candidate. We will need to deliberate." The man in gray said, glowering down at Borusa and then to the other members seated at the bench. He picked up his reading material and stood and looked up to Borusa. "We will be in touch soon."
The young man was in his dorm, packing his things. Silence for three days that was never a good sign when it came to the conferring of a degree. Most of the defenses were adjudicated the day of, and from what he could glean from records the longer it took the more likely the answer was 'no' but the Academic bureaucracy was too kind to give you the rejection so it took forever to arrive. There was a knock at his door. The young man walked to the door, opened it and immediately he jumped back as the large oak-tree figure of his teacher, Borusa, stood in the door frame.
"Hello." Borusa said.
"T-teacher, what are you-" the young man said quietly.
"I have something for you." Borusa said quietly, lifting an envelope. Even on Gallifrey, the truly important messages arrived on sheets of pressed plant material rather than on plasti-screens.
"Oh…" the young man said in dejection as he turned and walked to the bed in his dorm.
"Aren't you curious?" Borusa asked in annoyed shock.
"Why? I know they voted me down, you know it…why even bother?" The young man said.
"Ah, youth, always impetuous." Borusa said quietly as he walked over and sat next to the young man and dropped the envelope in his lap. "I suggest, maybe, you look first before you decide you have failed."
The young man furrowed his brow but he couldn't resist his master's imploring tone. He opened the envelope and extracted the letter.
"Dear sir and or madam-"The young man read. "Your thesis was exceedingly difficult for us to judge the merits of, and your character itself has been the subject of some concern by this council…" The young man shook his head. "I don't understand why you're making me-"
"Just keep going." Borusa said gently but sternly. The young man sighed and continued.
"Whilst the instinct is to decline the title of Time Lord in such cases…" The young man's eyebrows furrowed and then a smile started to form and he stood. "However, we could not find a considerable fault with the data collected or the published analysis by the candidate, and though his philosophical standing on the policies derived from this research is outside the mainstream, the content and presentation of the research is itself, on a technical level, not disqualifying and as such we are begrudgingly proud to confer upon you the title and standing of Time Lord, enclosed is the documentation and permitting afforded to a person of your position…" The young man looked to Borusa. "But how!? They hated me!"
"I believe the dominant species on Earth say something to effect of 'Hate the player not the game'." Borusa replied. "You did good work, and you fortunately have an advisor that knows how to play the game…"
"I can't believe it! They will never believe it at home!" The young man said as he jumped around the dorm room. "Brax is never ever going to believe it! I've gotta go home and tell everyone-"
"Now, just wait a moment, there are some formalities to attend to, such as picking a designation, a name to go by as your new self, a title to stand up to…" Borusa said quietly. "For instance I took up the title of Educator…even though I still utilize my own name. Now, the greatest and the best of us, become so subsumed in our titles that it becomes our sole signifier…the descriptor of our entire essence…so, you must choose a good one…lest you do end up being stuck with it."
"I-I…" The young man looked at the forms in his hands. "Doctor…"
"Mmm, not bad…not bad…" Borusa said as he reached up and ruffled the young man's head.
AN: I know right, I also thought I forgot this was a thing. I really didn't think I would publish this because this is getting to a level of indulgence that even I….find….disgruntling. But I'm good with it. It continues with a bit of a theme that I've been working through the last year and a half….Anyways hope to see you all are well….I'll see you again…sometime…but I never know when….what with my life being like crazy paving…..