Mia #16 The Planet Of Relaxation

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From alt.drwho.creative, it's Missing Internet Adventure #16: The Planet of Relaxation

Contains: Chapter 1: "The Sanctity of Life"* by Gregg Smith Chapter 2: "Dreams Take Form"* by Jeff Gilson Chapter 3: "The Silver Lining's Black Cloud" by Allyn Gibson Chapter 4: "An Ever-Opening Flower"* by Jefferson Eng Chapter 5: "Welcome Back" by K. Michael Wilcox Chapter 6: "Something Quite Terrible"* by Tony Whitt Chapter 7: "A Great Big Worm in the Rotten Core of Paradise" by Gregg Smith Chapter 8: "Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth" by John "Omega" Seavey *This chapter was originally untitled.

Chapter One, in which Sarah nearly feels crushed before embarking upon an investigation with the Doctor; we play witness to acts of kindness and acts of cruelty; and a move is made from a mood of madness and melancholy to one of misery and mystery. ** by Gregg Smith ** 'Some things are just too unjust for words.' - Ralph Ellison, 'Invisible Man.' At the top of the tower, in the windowless room, things crawl. They crawl in the bare grey stone of the floor and the walls, dance around the drab drapings over the door, circle the chamber's only living occupant, and fill the air with cruel pleasure. Things crawl, and whisper, in this windowless room, this eyrie of chains, this cold keep with coldness at its heart, the only building left on the moon of the fourth planet. But they fall still, and silent, at the sound of a heavy bolt being drawn back, as the door swings open and the drapes are dragged out, as a youthful figure, a man in cream and crimson, walks in. The candlelight shines his clothes, his face, his blonde hair. His footfalls seem to wash the floor clean. An ivory fetish, fulgent in this dark womb. The lone prisoner, nestling at the chamber's centre, drifts from his meditation and raises his face to the newcomer. "So good of you to come," he says with a thin smile. "Not at all," the Doctor nods in return. "You've changed. I - I recognise you, but that's a different face

you've got on. They're right, aren't they? No, no they can't be. We knew you weren't human, we knew, this must just be something you do. How long has it been for you?" "Not very long. How are you?" "How am I?" He chuckles, a sound like the sea on shale, then starts coughing. As his aged, weak frame topples forward the Doctor dives to support him. The prisoner pauses to catch his breath and the Doctor helps him sit up again. "As you can see, I am not in full health." "I'm - I'm sorry." "Yes, I'm sure you are." "I just wanted to see how you were doing. I should go." "They think I'm mad, you know. Mad old me, eh?" "But when I left, things - I don't understand." "Nothing is understood. But some things are felt. If you understand a story, it's just that it's been told badly. That's from Earth, you know, a famous writer once wrote that. In a play. A good play. Well, I like it." A pause. "But I can tell from your eyes what you're thinking, and you're probably right - I'm just showing off, like those wankers who stick quotes at the start of stories to make themselves look more intelligent or funnier." Another pause. "What happened?" "What happened? 'What happened,' he asks. What happened, what happened, what happened. Heh, heh, heh. I'll tell you what happened, sweetheart. You came here, that's what happened. Everything was fine until you came here. Profitable, comfortable. But you just couldn't keep your nose out, could you?" [Thirty Years Ago, Today] "Good morning, and how are we today?" IN EXCELLENT CONDITION, DOCTOR SANGSTOM, SIR. "Anything new I should know about?" THE BOARD HAS DECIDED TO EXTEND THE SUMMER SEASON BY THREE WEEKS NEXT YEAR. "Why?" TURNOVER IS DOWN THREE PERCENT, AND THEY HAVE HAD TO LIQUIDATE THIRTYSIX ASSETS. THE PRESS REACTED RATHER UNFAVOURABLY, AND CENTRAL SENT A FORMAL WARNING AND A COPY OF KARROLL'S 'THE SANCTITY OF LIFE.' IN ORDER TO AVOID SIMILAR BAD PUBLICITY AND DATA-USE NEXT YEAR, IT WAS DECIDED THAT AN EXTENSION TO THE SEASON AND THE PREDICTED INCREASE IN REVENUE FROM THAT WOULD BE THE BEST COURSE OF ACTION. SIR. "Silly bloody fools. Why they can't just fire our 'assets' instead of killing them I don't know." TECHNOLOGY, SIR, AS WELL YOU KNOW. IF OUR INNOVATIONS WERE TO FALL INTO THE HANDS OF OUR COMPETITORS, WHO KNOWS HOW OUR PROFIT SHARE WOULD BE AFFECTED? "Well, I suppose so. But don't you sometimes think we worry about profits a little too much?" CERTAINLY NOT, SIR. "Now, ORG, how on Earth did I know you were going to say that?" He was waiting by the door, flexing his muscles. His frame was slight and supple, but very well toned; his youthful body both pleasing to look at and in excellent condition. A prime example of young humanity. His hair was dark and close-cropped, his eyes a brilliant green, his skin tanned and soft. He was naked, but the chamber was warm and comfortable to be in.

His employment record listed him as: Hadyn Neville, Enhancement Classification 26, ID-EB237/000/9C. Meaningless bollocks, really, but the name and number were all he actually owned in the world, all that was his and no-one else's. Not that he minded anymore. The enhancement had made almost certain of that. Still, it was own fault for getting a job here, and you shouldn't feel too sorry for him. The Doctor was balanced, carefully, against the high ceiling, when Sarah found him. She craned her neck up, and shouted out to him. "Doctor, what are you doing?" "Shh!" He wavered a little, before straightening out his position. "I've nearly got it." "Got what?" "The Tourist Guide." He was reaching along the top of a bookcase, the only bookcase in the otherwise bare room. "The Tourist Guide to Alta Regina." As the Doctor grabbed for that book, he sent others sprawling down to a dusty fate on the floor below. "The what?" "What?" "The tourist guide to where?" Sarah dodged some more falling tomes and circled around to the edge of the bookcase, looking up at the Doctor. "Alta Regina." "Well, Doctor, you're going to - look out!" The Doctor grabbed his prize, as the bookcase toppled forward and crashed down to the floor, arcing past Sarah's face. Books splashed, liberally, around the room. Sarah stood, dumbfounded and covered in dust. She coughed a bit, blinked, then looked up. "Doctor?" "It's OK, I got it!" He was still in the air, already flicking through the slim volume. "Oh, good. I am glad. Are you going to come down now?" "Do you want me to?" "Well, it would certainly be kinder to my neck if you did." The Doctor reached into his pocket and pulled out a remote control. He pressed a few buttons, and the red pad he was crouching on began to float back down to the floor. "Is that better?" "Yes, thank you, Doctor. Now, what is Alta Regina?" "Alta Regina is a planet in the HOP system..." "HOP?" "Humanity-Only-Please; it's an area of space colonised by some very xenophobic humans during the 29th-century. They had taken something of a dislike to the Earth Empire's views on non-humans." "I thought you said the Empire was, er, species-ist." "It was, but not enough for some, so they colonised this solar system. Alta Regina is the moon of the fourth planet. And that's where we've landed." "Have we? And why have we done that?" "I thought it might be an interesting place for a little visit." He wandered past, not making eye contact. "What's going on, Doctor?" "Going on?" He stopped walking, and turned to face her. "Why should there be anything going on?" Hadyn ran his fingers around his client's shoulders, worked his way down the man's back, leaving a little trail in the oil as he did. He felt

anxiety in the man, he felt it in the man's muscles as his hands worked around them, he felt it in the shiver of the man's thighs as his knees brushed against them. He felt his client's pain and longing. He felt sorry for the man, he knew that this would help, would ease some of the man's stress. He guessed that a good three or four decades separated them in age. The client was relaxed now. Well more relaxed than when he'd come in - a plump little man, bright red and denying everything. He'd refused to look at Hadyn's face - or anything else - as he'd dropped his robe to the floor and quickly laid face down on the bed. But now, he was losing his self-conscious affectation, and his distance. "That's it. Just relax. Let all that tension flow out of you. Yes, that's right." His client's body seemed to glow in the diffused mood lighting of the sparsely furnished chamber. And as his hands crept further and further down, Hadyn felt himself drifting inside. All external stimuli, save the contact between him and his client, was switched off. It was just the two of them, there was no one else in the world, there was nothing else, there never had been and never would be. The initial exhilaration, the feeling of oneness, shared existence, collectivity, feelings so much more than feelings. But, as with so many things, what started wonderfully rapidly went downhill. His hands came to rest at the top of the man's buttocks, and he dug his fingers into the flesh there. His jaw locked slightly, and then snapped shut. He screwed his face, tensed his entire body. And then, metaphorically speaking at least, he pulled, pulled the man inside him. And as he did, he felt the concentration in his head replaced with distraction, the distraction of family, of mortgage, of work and no play, of friends he didn't like, of a family he couldn't stand. He remembered watching his son grow up, all the hopes he had had for him, the career prospects the boy could have had. He could have gone so far. But no he was just bumming around on some Academic world, he'd finished his degree but 'still wanted to be near his friends.' The idiot was going to be a writer, 'as if people of his background, of my background could be writers.' And as he did, he felt the charged, trained, desired stress in his muscles replaced by the stress of never being able to relax, of never taking time off, of always doing what he felt was expected of him, what he felt he needed to do, what he knew was his duty, rather than doing what he wanted to do (or would have wanted to do, if he wasn't so fucking uptight, so concerned with his job and boss and with bottom lines). Hadyn collapsed back, shivering. The client was stirring, stretching slightly, still exhausted obviously (as if he had done any of the work, as if he was in any state to be exhausted). Hadyn looked around, then went to the wardrobe and opened it. He hastily pulled out a robe and wrapped it around himself, covering up a slight embarrassment he hadn't felt a few minutes before. "Oh, that is fantastic." The client spoke. His voice was invigorated, though slightly drained. Hadyn turned to look at him. The man was standing beside the bed, yawning and stretching himself. "That was truly wonderful. I haven't felt so good in years. Thank you, thank you very much." He strode over and grabbed Hadyn's hand, shaking it vigorously. "That's... that's quite alright, glad to be of service." Hadyn looked sideways at the man, then slipped past him and retrieved his robe from the floor. "Here, why don't you put this on? It's a little chilly," he proffered the robe. The man took it slowly, and with a grin, and put it on. "Well, thanks again. I pay on the way out, don't I?" "Yes, yes that's right. And please, come again."

The client opened the chamber door and left. man, and fell back against it.

Hadyn closed it behind the

"That's it: 'The Planet of Relaxation - Auntie West-Lee's Amusements and Entertainments'?" "Well, it says a lot about how good relaxation is for you, how 'important it is to work out those little stresses and strains of daily life.' 'Healing with a human touch,' apparently. Some pictures, a few glowing references: 'I feel like a new man; it's completely changed my life; I've never been so happy; the world is new to me again,' and so on. But that's about all it says. And I've always been rather curious as to what goes one here." "Perhaps you should tell the Brigadier about it." "What?" "Well, he could do with unwinding a bit." "Yes. Yes, perhaps that's not a bad idea." "I was joking." "Yes." He sounded less than convinced. "Well. Let's find out what it's like, shall we." The Doctor activated the door control on the TARDIS' ornately gothic console. Hadyn walked into the Downtime room, smiling thinly at a few of his friends. The expansive chamber was full of people around his age, young adults, teens and a few adolescents. They sat around, mostly naked, picking at a wide variety of food and drink, a few smoking; they talked to each other, a few cuddled. Almost all of them seemed calm, content, at peace. "How're you doing?" Carmen, a sweet girl, always asking after him. "Fine, just fine." He frowned a little, staring at Carmen. They were all the same, really, women. Suck the life out of you, spend all your money, take all your time, then betray you and love your kids more than they could ever have loved you. Never doing what you ask them, always forcing you to shout and get angry, and then telling you what a bastard you are when you get angry, and how you shouldn't. Cooking those ready meals, mother never had to resort to such crap so why does she? And you know what she's up to, you can see the looks she gives the neighbours. Maybe once she just got off on the flirting, on the whistles and cat calls, and the way people looked. But how long could she have resisted temptation, eh? Certainly not longer than you managed to, so she must be at it with someone. Hadyn lashed his arm out and punched Carmen's jaw. She hit the floor, hard, and looked up at him nervously. "You'd better get unloaded as soon as. Must have been a hard one, eh?" Hadyn frowned again, and began to say that he was sorry, but Carmen put her hand up to stop him, shaking her head. "I understand. I've been there, I go there every day. We all do. You know that, or you will know it again in a minute, once we get you sorted out and get all that stuff out of your head." She stood, walking up to Hadyn and fingering the socket at the back of his neck, under his hair. "It's not as if I haven't done worse now, is it?" She pulled his robe open playfully, and then ran her finger across the white streak across his left thigh - the scar she'd left him. And then she thought of Kim and Oval, crossing herself as she did. "It's part of the job, innit?" she said, looking away. Sarah was looking out of the round window, watching a big blue rocketship

on the ground outside. A concourse ran from the landing pad, disappearing out of Sarah's view directly below her. It was large, and peppered with uniformed humans. When the doors to the ship opened and only a few dozen passengers disembarked down the gantry, the uniformed group seem to sigh as a whole, an act visible even from Sarah's high viewpoint, and a few turned away and began to head into the building dejectedly. Their fellows waited to greet the new arrivals, fake, saccharine smiles and reassuring welcomes Sarah imagined. The Doctor wandered up to join her, and she was about to turn towards him when a flurry of movement below caught her attention. The Doctor followed her gaze. A group of men and women in drab grey uniforms staggered down a gantry from one of the ship's cargo holds, dragging a large purple cephalopod between them. The creature was thrashing its tentacles, indignantly at first and then frantically, as they threw it onto the tarmac below. It landed on the top of its head, it's limbs waving in the air. Then the crew stalked down and around it, sizing the thing up, before pulling short black clubs from their belts. A squat, wiry man stepped forward and then with all his force began to batter the creature. The rest of the group soon followed suit, arcing their batons down with as much force as possible. They pummelled the creature's limbs, their weapons tearing open its marbled flesh. Thick, greenish blood began to run onto the ground, and a small satchel that the creature had been carrying was trampled under foot. The commotion drew the attention of the small crowd of arrivals, and a woman broke from the group. She clambered over the barricade at the edge of the concourse and ran over to the ground crew and their victim. She seemed to be shouting, but Sarah couldn't hear a thing through the glass. The woman pulled some of the crew out of her way as she got to them, stumbling through into the centre of the group. She pointed angrily at a collar on one of the cephalopod's tentacles, which was now hanging limply at an uncomfortable looking angle. Then she produced a small piece of yellow paper from her clutch purse and showed it around. Finally, and not to mention reluctantly, the crew withdrew. The woman stroked the alien's head, and was repeating something over and over to it as two men in white and red carried it away to a building on the opposite side of the landing pad, an infirmary of some sort. Unnoticed, the alien's satchel blew open and pieces of paper scattered across the tarmac. "Cejoy. A race of poets and public speakers," said the Doctor. "That... that creature?" Sarah stammered. "Yes. Their poetry is held in the highest regard throughout this galaxy. Important politicians employ them to write their speeches." "That woman seemed to treat it as a..." "Yes, I know. Come along, Sarah. I think we should be very careful." "There's a surprise." Sangstom looked down at the teenage girl and patted her lightly on the forehead. Her eyes fluttered up, briefly meeting his, then closed. "It's OK, It's OK. We'll take the blame away." He read the holograph to his right: Fliss Indie, EnClass 17, ID-AT916/000/6S. Fliss fell into a deep sleep. "Poor thing. Just a tool, really. Now wandering around with the guilt complex of a fifty-year-old government advisor. A vessel for someone else's past so that they can have a future." IT IS NOT LIKE YOU TO BE SENTIMENTAL, SIR. Sangstom frowned. "You're not mindless, ORG. Programmed heartlessly, perhaps, but you know what we're doing here. Don't you feel any regret, no sorrow for these people?"

THEY ARE WELL PAID, WELL TREATED. ORG's tone was contemplative, reasoned. "For the few scant years they survive, and besides a few hours of utter madness every other day, yeah, they are the richest, most satisfied of people. Kids fed on ambrosia and guilt, laid out on chiffon, silk and nervous disorders." THEY CHOOSE TO COME HERE, AND ARE INFORMED OF THE EXACT NATURE OF THEIR WORK BEFORE ANY CONTRACTS ARE SIGNED OR ENHANCEMENTS UNDERTAKEN. "Oh yes, they could always choose to stay at home and starve on the streets, or be killed by the Appearance Authorities." THAT'S MEDIA LIES. Sangstom sighed. "I don't blame you, ORG, really I don't. You've been programmed to think this way. But you've been doing this for a long time, as long as I've been alive. I can't be the first to try and make you see that what we're doing here is... not wrong, but... but..." IMMORAL? "Yes. Well, maybe. I don't know." I DO. I KNOW THAT WE ARE HELPING PEOPLE, THAT YOU AND I AND ALL OF THOSE BEFORE YOU HAVE HELPED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE. AND NOT JUST HOPPERS, HUMANS FROM ALL OVER THE EMPIRE HAVE COME HERE. "And paid highly for a bit of piece of mind, a quantum of solace, relief from their hang-ups, phobias and neuroses. Is it good to take all their monsters away, and if it's so good why don't we do it for everyone, instead of just those who can afford our high prices?" THINK HOW MAD THESE PEOPLE COULD HAVE BECOME IF WE DIDN'T HELP THEM, HOW MUCH THEY MIGHT SUFFER. ONLY THE RICHEST OF PEOPLE HAVE TO FACE THE STRESSES AND STRAINS THAT REQUIRE OUR TREATMENT. "Bull!" AND OUR TECHNOLOGY IS NOT CHEAP. THIS PLACE IS NOT RUN ON GOOD WILL. "No, that's the last thing it's run on." THINK HOW MANY MORE WOULD SUFFER IF OUR SERVICE DID NOT EXIST. HOW MANY OF OUR CLIENTS WOULD HAVE SNAPPED AND KILLED THEMSELVES, OR OTHERS, OR JUST NOT DONE THEIR JOBS PROPERLY. HOW MANY PEOPLE WOULD BE DEAD, OR IMPOVERISHED, IF WE WEREN'T HERE? "But these kids..." YES, IT IS A SHAME ABOUT THEM. BUT IT HAS TO BE DONE. "I don't know if I can do it much longer." YOU ARE WELL CARED FOR HERE, SIR. AND THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS WOULD NEVER ALLOW YOU TO LEAVE. "No." DOCTOR... DAVE, I CARE ABOUT YOU. YOU MUST TRY TO OVERCOME THESE DOUBTS. PERHAPS YOU SHOULD HAVE THE THERAPY YOURSELF. "No! Never." A Pause. THIS ONE IS FINISHED. "What?" THE PROCESS IS OVER, THIS SUBJECT HAS BEEN RESTORED TO MEDIUM LEVEL. I HAVE PERFORMED ABSORBTION, SHE IS... "Right, I get the picture." Sangstom looked down at Fliss. "Come on, love. Wake up. Time to go, now. Your friends are waiting for you." The girl opened her eyes and smiled. She stood, and left in silence, turning at the door to mouth 'thanks, Dave' to Sangstom. He smiled back. "You're welcome," he said, once the girl was gone. "I'll prep the equipment for the next one, ORG." SO THAT'S WHY HE WAS NEVER IMPEACHED. "ORG? Is something wrong?" NO. JUST A GLITCH IN MY SYSTEM. "Are you sure?"

YES, DAVE.

I'M FINE.

"Ah, there you are." A woman's voice. The Doctor froze, in an exaggerated 'eight-year-old-caught-with-fingersin-cookie-jar' pose. Sarah turned around, an explanation already forming in her mind. The woman wore a green uniform, bland and unassuming, and, like the similarly-dressed man next to her, she had her hands clasped behind her back. "Did you get separated from your Check-In group? Did you? Oh well, it doesn't matter, we'll find them for you, don't you worry. Now, do you have your papers? Your important documents?" Sarah and the Doctor looked at each other. "I think there's been some mistake," Sarah began, but the Doctor kicked her lightly in the shins and she stopped. "Can't you remember?" The woman turned to the man at her side. "Looks like a real couple of dopes here. Major-coma burn-out type stuff. We'll take them up to ORG and see if he can id them." She turned back to the time travellers. "Now, we're going to take you somewhere nice and safe, and everything is going to be just fine. It's great upstairs, there're lots of relaxing things, and you want to relax, don't you? And I know you'll just love ORG." The woman stepped forward, smiling all the time, and brought her hands out. She was holding a pair of handcuffs. Before he could re-act, the Doctor found himself swung around and cuffed behind his back. Sarah found herself in the same predicament, at the hands of the uniformed man. Then the two officials produced dummies from their pockets and shoved them into the Doctor and Sarah's mouths (blue for him, pink for her). Some sort of suction device held them there, gagging the two. "I say," said the man, "you don't suppose they're - aliens." The last word had been hushed, and uncomfortably said. "Don't know. Don't worry, if they are we'll soon sort them out. But they seem pretty decent and human to me." "Now, off we go. And don't worry, ORG will soon have your minds nice uncluttered, free from all the problems, woes, all the experience that is so dogging your working potential. You'll soon be just as good as new, prepped for a brand new life in the futures markets, or whatever your employer's particular profession. And we can assure you, they will be very happy with our work. And you'll be happy to. There'll be nothing in your minds to make you in the slightest bit unhappy. Isn't that good news?"

Chapter Two, in which more things happen, and dreams take form. ** by Jeff Gilson ** "And we can assure you, they will be very happy with our work. And you'll be happy too. There'll be nothing in your minds to make you in the slightest bit un-happy. Isn't that good news?" Hadyn Neville sank back into the sleeper in his cubicle. He was always tired after an unloading, something he'd come to understand as normal. He quickly fell into dreaming, which, had he been conscious, would have alarmed him. The implants and conditioning were supposed to remove the dream ability.

A man walked towards him, tall, blue eyes, and big teeth. /Hadyn,/ he said, /let me go./ The man transformed into that afternoon's client. /Kill the bitch, she'll never care for you./ Another transformation and another voice, Carmen this time. /We all do it. We all do it. We all do it./ Then Hadyn walked forward and twisted her neck. And then Hadyn woke up screaming. Dave Sangstom approached his office door, a maneuver made fifteen times a day. Which made missing the handle more bothersome than it should have been. He turned to look behind him, see if anyone noticed, but the coast was clear. He didn't have to worry about looking like an idiot, just about being one. He was even starting to think he should make use of the company's services. But then, he knew what would happen if he allowed that. He tried the door again, this time finding the handle and turning it. The door didn't even need a handle with the technology available, but he, like several billion others, was a fan of the twentieth century and as soon as he had the power to do so, he had his office decked out like that of a mid-1980s stock broker. His connection to ORG was the only thing in his office that didn't exactly match the decor. It was bulky, despite itself, and a dull shade of yellow that had once been white plastic. ORG was well over two hundred years old and had run the Relaxation Center for all that time. Of course, ORG didn't run it on paper, the Corporation would never get away with that. After all, ORG wasn't human, and around here that was enough to make it less, even if it was an intelligent being. Especially if it was. No, Sangstom was the director as far as all the information about the place was concerned, but he didn't actually run a damn thing. Except for the one thing that ORG couldn't know about. The Doctor was walking peacefully, as much due to the gag in his mouth as was due to his ability to be calm in almost any situation. Sarah, on the other hand, was much less peaceful, trying to get out of her bonds, spit out the dummy, something. She'd even considered kicking her captor, but knew without the Doctor's help, she wouldn't get anywhere. The two guards were still chattering at each other. "This is more excitement than we've had in a while," the man said. His name, apparently, was Grant. "Almost no one breaks in here, you see," he said, inclining toward Sarah in a way that made her even more uncomfortable. "We don't know that they broke in," said the woman, whose name Sarah hadn't got. "They could just be exceedingly stupid. ORG will sort them out, though. He always does." "Who is this ORG, anyway?" asked the Doctor. The two guards did a double-take and the woman walked in front of the taller Time Lord. Sure enough, his dummy was nowhere to be seen. "Where--?" "I ate it," he said, and brought her down with a knock between their heads. Before Grant could react, Sarah had turned and kicked the front of his knee before putting her own knee in his groin. "Sarah, get my sonic screwdriver." She reached into his coat pocket and drew forth the tool, which the Doctor used on his bonds, and then hers. He then extracted the gag from her mouth. "Doctor, how did you--" "Shh. Get Grant, I'll take care of her." Sarah put the hand cuffs on the young man, who was still reeling in agony, and stuck the gag in his

mouth. She then pulled him over to where the Doctor was tending to the woman. The Doctor put the cuffs on her arms, behind her back, looped between his arms. He then used the sonic screwdriver again to, apparently, fuse the locks. "That should keep them for a while," the Doctor said. "How did you get the gag out of your mouth?" "Let's walk and talk," he said, pulling her along with him down the corridor in the same direction that they had been heading. "I used it's design against itself. It was designed to suck, I just let it continue all the way inside." He produced it from his inside jacket pocket. "It wasn't much to spit it out unseen." "Where to now?" "Well, I think we deserve to visit ORG, don't you?" There was no day or night on Alta Regina, except that every twenty-three days it changed from dark to light or from light to dark. Sunset alone lasted forty-eight standard hours. Therefore, circadian rhythms were unbearably hard to maintain. This worked in the favor of those who made money off of the regular inhabitants of this moon, but for novitiate handers, for that's what Hadyn had learned they were unofficially called. They did their stuff by touch. Hadyn's being awake now, though, had nothing to do with having no sense of what time it really is. He had left his cubicle to go to the Downtime room, but found himself wandering though the living section instead. He hoped he could find some sort of solace for the nightmare he'd had. It had to be a matter of a bad unloading, but there was nothing that could have caused that except-And that was a thought that scared him more than the dream had. That ORG could be faulty? It was unthinkable. Another more disturbing thought occurred to Hadyn, and somehow it was less unthinkable. The thought actually cheered him up a little, though heavens knew why. What if ORG left thoughts in his head on purpose? The Doctor tried another door. He had tried almost every door in this wing, and Sarah was starting to get restless. "Doctor, there's nothing down here. As much as I love the idea of snooping around, when there's nothing to snoop, you move on." "Ah, yes, but when there is?" The Doctor backed up and showed her what was in the room he'd just opened. The room was filled with computer banks. "One might think they'd lock the door if it was important," Sarah said, still skeptical. "They did. I undid." The Doctor smiled a toothy grin and ushered Sarah into the room, following on her heels. Immediately, alarms sounded. "Hmm, should have thought of that," the Doctor muttered under his breath. The two turned to leave the room and were faced with two green-clad guards. These carried rather lethal looking guns, as opposed to the two previous captors. "Do we surrender?" Sarah asked. "We surrender," the Doctor confirmed. "And just when I was getting used to speaking again." Dave Sangstom tossed and turned in his attempt to sleep. He was not enhanced like the handers under his control, and therefore dreams came naturally to him. His dreams, though, included horrible things like dragons named ORG, and if he allowed his dreams to follow him into his waking self, he would never be able to face ORG as he did every day. He

needed a vacation. He had to laugh at that thought. He needed a vacation from paradise. Of course, paradise had a few too many snakes for his taste. Or large serpents, at the very least. Could he run the Center without ORG? No, he had to conclude. And he would never be allowed to quit. While he didn't have the actual enhancements, he knew those enhancement in detail. I could never quit or retire. If he did, he would be liquidated, which wasn't far off from actually describing the method used for termination. It was a nasty business, and the few he'd been forced to witness (as all employees of the Corporation had, as a warning) were the stuff of nightmares themselves. Of course, he often had dreams where he slew the dragon, but as often he was melted by the fiery maw of the beast. He could never allow himself to be Relaxed because if ORG knew he thought of rebellion, he would be a black river of his constituent elements before one could say Fliss Indie. Fliss was a beautiful girl, but that's all she was. She was only fourteen standard years, and already enhanced and slaved to the Corporation. Not that they didn't pay well, but it was the sort of work that ate at the soul. Every time she was unloaded, a bit of her went, too. That was the great secret. Well, one of the great secrets. There were so many, how one could be determined to be the greatest was beyond him. Sangstom finally gave up pretending to sleep after a couple hours and got dressed. If he wasn't sleeping, he might as well be working. He and ORG had to put together some reports for the Corporation. They were tabbed "Highest Urgency," which was why he had procrastinated on them. He caught the first monotram down to the Center, again ready to make deals with the beast instead of slaying it. The cell that Sarah and the Doctor had been taken to looked much like all the other cells they'd been in during their time together. Except that the walls were pink. "You know," Sarah said, looking up at the pink ceiling and back down to the pink floor, "I'm getting rather sick of pastels." "They're supposed to be relaxing, at least to the human eye. The insectoid Hxthschrg find them to be a source of great pain." "Doctor, were there any vowels in--" The question was interrupted by the opening of the door. The man who entered wore a grey uniform. He was older than most of the guards they'd seen, and most everyone else they'd seen, actually. He was smiling and appeared about ready to whistle a jaunty tune when he noticed the two in the cell. "Oh," he said, without a trace of embarrassment, "they didn't tell me this room was occupied. I'll let you get back to it." "Back to it?" Sarah asked. "Yes," the Doctor said over her question, "we'll get right to it. Thank you." He was smiling again, a smile like he got the joke when Sarah wasn't even sure there was a joke to get. Then he batted his eyelashes at the man, who just smiled and turned around. "Doctor, do I want to know?" Sarah asked under her breath. "Not likely," he responded in kind. "Ta, ta." Hadyn was coming back to his cubicle from the Downtime area. He was ready to sleep now, he was sure. He'd thought of nothing but his new notion, knowing that he could only think of it for just so long before he was in danger of ORG discovering that he was onto the computer's game. He passed by Carmen's cubicle and looked inside. She was her sleeper,

perfectly peaceful. She really was a lovely girl, if a bit simple at times. But she did have that history of negative reactions to the handing. And Kim and Oval, the two she would never forgive herself for. She had just processed a proli who had saved up money his whole life to get a trip to Alta Regina. He was fifty standard years if he was a day. He had been in one of the Empire's wars as a youth, infantry. Actually hand-to-hand on alien worlds. After that, he had emigrated to the HOP system on his military pension and gotten a job as a terraformer. That was all public record. The proli had a dark side, though, which was why he (why everyone) wanted to visit the Center. He wanted his dark side cleansed. He had a horrible temper, and had killed several humans when he was younger, some in his own platoon. This is what Carmen had shared with Hadyn when she first told him about Kim and Oval. She had gone to the Downtime area after the processing to unwind before unloading. One of the young handers looked like one of the men this proli had killed, and she few into a rage and ran at him. He moved out of the way and her momentum caught Kim full in the torso. Her momentum sent her crashing into Oval, and they both fell over the railing down five stories to the open reception area below. Oval had died immediately, but Kim lived longer. Or would have, but she was considered a liability in her comatose state and was liquidated. Carmen squirmed in her sleep and a green light over her head indicated that her sleep cycle was over. Her eyes opened and she saw Hadyn. "Hi, Hadyn." Hadyn thought one of them should have been embarrassed, though they'd seen each other naked often enough. To Hadyn, something in watching her sleep had made it as though a line had been transgressed. Carmen obviously didn't agree, as she wasn't troubled in the least. "I'm going to sleep," he said, as though it was the natural thing to say. "Did you stay up all night watching me?" she asked, smiling. "No. Just my rhythms bothering me." Sangstom arrived at his office a few minutes after he'd left the domicile, and sat down behind his desk. 'GOOD MORNING, DAVE. TROUBLE SLEEPING?' "Some. Also, we have those reports to get done." 'HMM, YES. THERE'S SOMETHING YOU NEED TO DO FIRST. WE CAUGHT TWO PRISONERS WHO MANAGED TO ESCAPE BEFORE WE RECAPTURED THEM. THEY WERE HEADING STRAIGHT FOR THE CONTROL CENTER.' "Human?" 'THEY LOOK HUMAN. HOWEVER, THERE IS EVIDENCE THAT AT LEAST ONE MIGHT NOT BE. THEY ARE BEING HELD IN THE MATING WING UNTIL YOU DETERMINE WHETHER THEY SHOULD BE PROCESSED BY OUR EMPLOYEES, OR BY ME PERSONALLY.' "Personally? When is the last time you processed a non-employee personally?" 'SEVENTY-FIVE STANDARD YEARS, DAVE. DO NOT WORRY, I AM VERY EFFICIENT IN MY PROCESSING.' "Somehow, ORG, I'm not surprised about that. How long have they been waiting?" 'TWO HOURS.' "They can wait a little longer. I want some coffee first." After what seemed like an impossibly long wait, the door to the room opened again, and a younger man in a smart charcoal uniform marched in. If Sarah had to guess, she'd say he was about her age, physically, but his eyes

spoke of a much longer and/or harder life. If nothing else, there was a great weight of responsibility. "Hello. Sorry to keep you waiting. I'm Dr. Dave Sangstom. What are your names?" "I'm Sarah Jane Smith, and this is the Doctor," the Doctor said. "Um, I think you got that backwards," Sarah said. "Did I? Oh, dear, I did. I'm the Doctor, it seems, and this is Sarah." "'The Doctor?'" Sangstom repeated with a smile. "No surname?" "Never needed one before. Well, that's not true, but I just usually take hers." "And he usually forgets to put it back," Sarah deadpanned. "Well, you two are certainly interesting. Have you met ORG yet? No, of course you haven't. Micah," he called into the corridor, "wheel it in, please." A computer terminal was brought in on a cart with wobbly wheels. "Hmm," Sarah mused. "Nine centuries, you'd think they could create a better cart." "That was a low priority," the Doctor responded. "Sarah, Doctor, let me introduce you to ORG." 'HELLO.' The computer's voice seemed to come from all around them, but was not unbearably loud. In fact, it was a quite pleasant voice. Of course, Sarah had had about enough of pleasant. "ORG, it's a pleasure," the Doctor said, extending a hand to shake, then appearing to think better of it. "So, what manner of AI are you? From the looks, you're a mid-twenty-ninth century update of a twenty-seventh century architecture." 'VERY PERCEPTIVE, DOCTOR. APPARENTLY YOU KNOW A BIT ABOUT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?' "Oh, I've dabbled here and there. I think I've dabbled in just about everything, actually." 'FROM HERE FORWARD, YOU SHOULD THINK OF ME AS YOUR FRIEND. WE WANT TO HELP YOU, BUT WE CAN'T HAVE YOU JUST WANDERING AROUND THE CENTER UNATTENDED. YOU UNDERSTAND, I'M SURE.' "I understand at least," Sarah said. 'YOUR CLOTHES ARE ANACHRONISTIC. SARAH APPEARS TO BE A TWENTIETH CENTURY FETISHIST LIKE DAVE. YOUR CLOTHING, DOCTOR, DOES NOT SEEM TO FIT ANY KNOWN FASHION PERIOD.' "You're a fashion critic, too?" The Doctor smiled even broader now, trying to out-pleasant the computer. "How very interesting." 'I HAVE DECIDED THAT YOU SHALL BE TREATED TO THE RELAXATION BY OUR STAFF. AFTER YOUR...RELAXATION, YOU WILL BE FREE TO LEAVE, IF YOU WISH.' "And if we don't wish?" Sarah asked. 'IN THE LIKELY EVENT THAT YOU NEVER WANT TO LEAVE, YOU WILL BE CARED FOR.' "What ORG means," Sangstom said, "is that you will have no ill feelings toward him, or us, or anything at all. Nothing at all will matter to you." Though it was pleasantly said, no one in the room missed the ominousness of the director's words. Hadyn awoke in a sweat. He jumped from the sleeper. He had to get rid of the dream. He had to. He'd seen the toothy man again. He saw Dave. He saw the man from the earlier afternoon. And he saw Carmen again. He started pacing down the corridor between the cubicles, unmindful of where he was going, and ending up at Carmen's cubicle again. She was still there getting ready for her day (Hadyn hadn't been asleep long). When he saw her this time, he felt no embarrassment. He felt only one thing.

Anger. He marched towards her. "Back again, Hadyn? Hadyn? Come in, you're not feeling well. Get away, Hadyn. Get back." Hadyn saw his hands raise up and clasp around Carmen's neck. She screamed. He squeezed.

Chapter Three: "The Silver Lining's Black Cloud" ** by Allyn Gibson ** 'IN THE LIKELY EVENT THAT YOU NEVER WANT TO LEAVE, YOU WILL BE CARED FOR.' "What ORG means," Sangstom said, "is that you will have no ill-feelings toward him, or us, or anything at all. Nothing at all will matter to you." Though it was pleasantly said, no one in the room missed the ominousness of the director's words, least of all the Doctor who reached into his pocket in a non-threatening manner, fishing around until at last he pulled out a rumpled paper bag and fished out a tiny red candy. "Jelly baby?" he asked, holding the bag out and waving it past first Sarah Jane who sat in a dejected manner on the bunk and then Sangstom who shook his head dismissively. Shrugging, the Doctor plopped the jellybaby in his mouth as with his other hand he stuffed the bag back into his pocket. Once the candy had been swallowed, the Doctor said, "Tell me, Sangstom, when you say no feelings, to what extent are you referring?" Sangstom smiled thinly. "Why, no feelings whatsoever, none of the darker feelings, at any rate." "No feelings, no feelings at all?" the Doctor exclaimed. "Why, without feelings I might as well ask then whatever is the point of living." Sangstom sighed, looking first to the clearly infuriated Doctor then to the dejected looking Sarah Jane Smith. "Tell me, Doctor, have you ever found a point of life? Have you ever found life to be without pain?" He paused and surveyed the two prisoners, awaiting their response, but none was forthcoming. "No? Well, here on Alta Regina we have. By taking away the darker human impulses, the darker emotions, humanity can live together in peace and harmony without hate, without anger, without fear, those things that tear humanity down and spur human conflict." Sarah looked up, her head rested squarely in her hands. "But how do you do that? I've always thought that feelings were innate; when I was a reporter I dealt with others' feelings on a daily basis and I know how much of what humanity is comes from its capacity for feeling. Feelings are simply there, and I can't understand how you just take them away." The light atop the computer terminal began to blink, slowly at first and then more rapidly as the harsh metallic voice of ORG filled the cell. 'NOT ALL EMOTIONS WILL BE REMOVED, ONLY THOSE THAT ARE DETRIMENTAL TO THE SOCIAL ORDER. THOSE EMOTIONS ARE SUPPRESSED AT THE BIOCHEMICAL LEVEL THROUGH MODIFICATIONS TO THE NEURAL STRUCTURE OF THE AMYGDALA STRUCTURES OF THE HUMAN BRAIN.' "An invasive procedure, then?" asked the Doctor. Sangstom shrugged. "Not entirely. Our procedures work more through suppression of neurotransmitters on an electrochemical level than through rewiring of the neural pathways. In extreme cases, I must concede that physical modifications to the brain must be done, but in the end the results are satisfactory." The Doctor looked at Sangstom squarely. "Satisfactory, by whose standards?" "Our societal standards, of course." Sangstom paused, gauging the Doctor. "Tell me, what do you know of our society? Clearly, something, otherwise you would not have chosen to come here, but how deep does your

knowledge go?" The Doctor smiled. taken as it comes."

"Deep enough, I should think.

The rest, I've always

Picture the human neck. Thirty centimeters in diameter, perhaps thirtyfive at most. Carmen Bunsen's neck, however, measured a mere twenty-seven centimeters around, while Hadyn's hands stretched each a full eighteen. As his hands wrapped their way around her neck, the palm rested squarely across the front, thumbs extended upward along the trachea toward the chin, the fingers spread wide across each side, taking in as much of the surface of the neck as possible. Picture the human mind. Somewhere within Carmen's mind, at a level that she was not consciously aware of, she knew what was happening, that her life was in danger, that these hands of Hadyn's, hands that she had known in other contexts so many other times, offered not the promise of a fine massage but the certainty of her life being strangled away. Picture the human heart. Under normal circumstances, its beats out a rhythmic pulse, sixty times a minute. Carmen's heart, however, excited by the adrenaline surge my mind had forced, raced ahead, past 100 beats, past 150 beats, onward and upward. Her blood surged through her arteries, the pressure behind each surge of blood rising with each pulse. Faster and faster the blood flowed, faster and faster the heart beat. And against Hadyn, Carmen struggled, strongly at first, spurred by the rising adrenaline and the forceful heartbeat. Now, picture the effect Hadyn's hands had upon all these systems. First, Hadyn's fingers squeeze tightly, placing pressure from the index finger on down, each finger applying slightly more pressure than the finger above, shutting off the flow of blood through the carotid arteries to the brain. With the grip secure, the palms press inward, pushing against the trachea, cutting off flow of air through the trachea, trapping the exhausted breath within the lungs and preventing the flow of fresh oxygen to enter within. Next, the fingers tighten even more, not only putting pressure against the carotid arteries but tightening on the capillaries as well, putting pressure on vessels meant to have no pressure and forcing the blood to backlog, but under the rising pressure of her surging heart the capillaries rupture, the blood spilling out into the surrounding tissue, darkening it under Hadyn's grip. With the surface blood spilling and the flow of the carotid blocked, the brain begins to wither, starved of the oxygen that it so amply needs to function properly. Within minutes, the brain begins to falter, its perceptions skewered, as its cells begin to die, starved of oxygen. Five minutes after Hadyn entered Carmen's cubicle her struggle ceased. Thirty seconds later, Carmen's body fell limp to the floor, after a loud crack as the neck vertebrae snapped and a large bruise spread across her neck. Within six minutes of entering Carmen's cubicle for the last time, Hadyn Neville confidently strode out into the hall heading for the communal marketplace, the last vestiges of his surging anger sated by the shattered body left behind. Sangstom smiled. "Doctor, you are at once charming and infuriating." He looked to Sarah. "You're his friend, obviously. I suppose you might say the same." Sarah shrugged. "I would, if it weren't so obviously true." The Doctor feigned a look of deep surprise. "Sarah, I had no idea you felt this way. I shall have to rectify this situation at once. What might you suggest?"

"Well, I might suggest a vacation. They do have beneficial psychological effects, you know." The Doctor shrugged. "Not entirely; it seems that every time I try to enjoy a restful vacation, something dreadful always comes up." He looked back to Sangstom. "Indeed, I imagine that Alta Regina might well be the perfect vacation spot for the both of us, if you might agree, Doctor Sangstom. Secluded, relaxful, a population of docile humans. Why, what trouble could paradise offer?" "Thus far, it's offered you," said Sangstom tartly. "Assaulting our guards, who offered only to help you get back to your vacation, then engaging in a trite debate when we could quite easily have had witty banter." He shrugged. "If you can promise to behave, then I might perhaps allow you to return to your delayed vacation. Otherwise, ORG will have to be used, and I would rather that not happen." The Doctor looked at ORG and then at Sangstom. "I would ask why that is, but I doubt seriously that you would tell me." "You are quite correct, Doctor." Sangstom rubbed his chin. "Now, I would imagine that you are not registered guests." He looked at his two prisoners and then scratched at his chin. "No, I thought not. I wouldn't imagine that you came here through the traditional channels, no?" "Well, we're here, aren't we?" said Sarah. "Ah, but that's not exactly what I'm after. If I were to consult ORG, it would have no record of your arrival, nor would it have record of your presence until approximately three hours ago, now would it?" The Doctor smiled thinly. "You could ask ORG; I'd be quite curious what it said." "Doctor, Doctor, we have no need for these games. Your answer is enough to confirm my suspicions. I am a generous man on occasion, and I am willing to forego the standard procedures and allow yourselves to have a pleasant vacation, no questions asked." "But will we be allowed to leave?" asked Sarah. Sangstom moved to the computer terminal and flicked a switch. The light atop the terminal died, and Sangstom's expression grew more serious. "You are outsiders, and there is no one else to whom I can turn. In exchange for your freedom, you must assist me." The Doctor scowled. "Assist you, after imprisoning us? I should think not!" "Doctor, you must understand. Alta Regina is a planned community; our social structure is engineered to be as it is, and ORG oversees all of our structure. But, I have reason to believe that something has gone wrong, and I am powerless to act." "I don't understand," said Sarah. "Each member of the Alta Regina society fulfills a specific societal role, with a purpose determined by ORG based upon each individual's unique talents, producing the goods and services that member is uniquely capable of producing, all oriented towards the society as a whole." "And immigrants?" asked the Doctor, his voice heavy with sarcasm. "You mean the vacationers, I take it. Yes, well, they too are integrated into the social plan, because once they are here they undergo a strict socialization process, overseen by ORG, to enable them to fulfill a social role that is presently lacking at the time of their arrival." "Your immigrants, then, they undergo a testing process before their arrival here? A screening?" Sangstom nodded. "With the screening, we are able to determine before arrival who is best suited to our society. Those that do not pass the screening do not receive passes to come here." The Doctor looked at Sangstom quizzically. "The society, how does it remain stable?"

Sangstom shrugged. "I suppose the best analogy would be that of an ant colony. ORG is like the queen ant, the citizens the worker ants. There is no need for drones; ORG has no need to reproduce. The citizens carry out the will of ORG." "It seems to me, then, that ORG is the problem with your society, that its ills can be traced back to the artificial intelligence." Sangstom shook his head. "No, removing ORG from the equation would be detrimental for several reasons. The most important is that, without ORG, the artificial environment we have established here would collapse almost immediately; this moon is uninhabitable without the technology we have and the constant, instantaneous control that ORG provides. And without ORG the emotional conditioning that the citizenry enjoys would collapse as well." Sarah Jane asked, "But how would that be bad? It seems to me that this would restore their humanity, and I can't see how that's bad." "ORG provides the meaning and purpose to the citizenry's lives. Without ORG, they would be like aimless drones, unable to do anything for themselves. ORG doesn't force people to do anything now, but they work best with ORG's ministrations; without that, they would do nothing and ultimately die." "I must ask," said the Doctor, "if ORG controls everything, how is it that you can speak so freely with us now? I wouldn't imagine that simply turning the terminal off would shut ORG out of the conversation." Sangstom shook his head. "ORG and I have a special relationship; I receive a degree of autonomy from that." "Oh?" said the Doctor. Sangstom tapped his temple. "I have a neural implant, a direct mental connection to ORG, and because of that, I can selectively eliminate ORG from my thoughts. But only so often, and then not completely. You see, on some level, I am ORG." "Then why should we trust you?" said the Doctor. "You've given us no reason to do so, you realize." "And I have no reason to trust you, but I have no choice." Sangstom paused. "I need an outsider's opinion, someone unlimited by our social constraints, and your ease of escape earlier today shows that you have the qualities I require. Will you help me, Doctor? A society hangs in the balance." "I don't know, Sangstom. I'm tempted to take my chances with ORG and this cell; I think I might end up with a better deal." "Your freedom versus a life not of your choosing. The choice seems obvious to me." The Doctor turned to Sarah. "I leave the decision to you, Sarah." Sarah looked at Sangstom. "One question, then." "Alright." "What exactly is the problem you need help with?" The doors to the apartment swished shut and Amanda set the bag down on the table. She looked about, toward the kitchen, and noticed a few papers amiss. "You can come out," she said. From the shadows of the kitchen Hadyn emerged. "You weren't here last night," he said. "I had duties," she said. "My husband. He had a rough night and needed comforting." She walked over to the couch, sat down and then removed her shoes, tossing them across the carpet. Hadyn came into the living room and stood before her. "You have other duties. Duties to me." She shook her head. "He doesn't know about you, he can't know about you."

She paused. "He doesn't know about here." "Are you sure?" "ORG would never allow it, would never allow us." "ORG? ORG is nothing but an obstacle to be overcome. We have overcome ORG." Amanda leaned back on the couch, resting her head on the arm and looking up at Hadyn. "Is that was this is about? ORG? There's more to life than Alta Regina. So much more," she said as she looked at Hadyn with a hunger in her eyes. Hadyn sat quickly on the edge of the sofa, turned slightly leaning over Amanda, his left arm gently stroking her hair, his right arm resting lightly on the inside of her thigh. "Yes, perhaps you are right," he said as he leaned down and touched his lips softly to hers. As Amanda's arms stretched out to envelop Hadyn, his right hand moved upward, up past Amanda's waist, reaching back behind her. Amanda pushed herself into the passion of the embrace, never noticing the motions of Hadyn's hands, as they moved further and further towards her neck, never noticing the heat that filled Hadyn's still open eyes, the heat of an unquenchable anger that burrowed deep into his soul. As Amanda broke the embrace and leaned back on the couch, she looked up too late, too see the hands work their way around her neck, too late to see the thin, gleeful smile that spread across Hadyn's lips as he prepared to take another life, the life of his lover, Amanda Sangstom.

Chapter Four, in which events unfold like an ever-opening flower. ** by Jefferson Eng ** The beaches on Alta Regina were hailed by tourists in this sector of the galaxy to be one of the best - if not the best - relaxation spots in all the nine solar systems. The praise that was hailed in high regard certainly kept Alta Regina very reputable up to this day. Some say that even though the length of the day of the planet was for quite a period of time lasting for almost a normal calendar month, one would never get sunburnt. Sure enough, through the wonders of science and technology, it was even proven that Alta Regina's ozone layer filtered out 99.9% of all its suns harmful UV radiation particles. The beach was certainly bustling with sunbathers that day. Many came to relax like they had planned to and even Sarah Jane and the Doctor were enjoying themselves on this bright, sunny day. Yet Sarah had a niggling thought in the back of her mind. Something Dr. Sangstom said, but she couldn't quite comprehend. "Doctor," she said querulously, "what are we doing here?" "We're sitting on the beach enjoying the salt sea air and relaxing," the Doctor replied from underneath his hat which covered most of his face. "No," Sarah retorted, "why haven't taken off in the TARDIS and gone someplace else?" "Because, my dear Sarah, Dr. Sangstom asked us to investigate some weird happenings." "But it doesn't make sense that we're sitting on the beach waiting for something to happen." "Sarah," the Doctor sighed, "do you know what a Judas goat is?" Sarah looked at the Doctor for a moment. "Yes, I think so," she replied. "Well, Dr. Sangstom asked me to be that Judas goat. I intend not to

adopt that role just yet." "Well, if you're not going to do anything," Sarah said as she got up and picked up her belongings and clothes, "I may as well investigate on my own." The Doctor shot himself up off the beach chair he was sitting on and looked at his companion directly. "Now don't you go doing anything rash, Sarah," he almost shouted. "Doctor, I can take care of myself," she reassured him. "Fine, then be careful and always keep your eyes open for any trouble." "We're in trouble," David Sangstom said as he paced up and down his office. WHAT IS IT, DAVE? Sangstom waved a paper that he took from his desk. "There was a murder in one of the worker's cubicle," he said. "A girl named Carmen Bunsen." THAT'S TOO BAD. HOW DID SHE DIE? "Strangulation," Dave replied, "and it looks pretty nasty too." IT'S A PITY, YOU KNOW. TO BE TAKEN BEFORE THE PRIME OF HER LIFE. Sangstom looked up at the computer. "Why ORG," he said, "I didn't know you cared." I DON'T. I WAS JUST GIVING YOU THE RESPONSE YOU EXPECTED TO HEAR FROM ANY OTHER PERSON. Dr. Sangstom had to emit a slight chuckle after that statement. To think that Artificial Intelligence computer would actually care about a person's death was preposterous at best, especially for ORG. ORG was just poking fun at him and he knew it. After all this time he knew ORG, though, there were things it that even surprised himself. THERE ALSO SEEMS TO BE A REPORT OF ANOTHER MISSING WORKER NAMED HADYN NEVILLE, ENHANCEMENT CLASSIFICATION 26, ID-EB237/000/9C. Sangstom nodded in agreement. "Ah, yes, I did notice that in the report as well. Do you think that the two have a connection in any way?" THERE IS THAT POSSIBILITY. THERE HAVE BEEN REPORTS FROM WITNESSES THAT THEY WERE LAST SEEN TOGETHER. Sangstom sat down behind his desk. No doubt about it, the connection was there. How it happened was a different matter. At least he had the Doctor as an outsider to investigate these matters for him. The Doctor could care less about Sangstom's problems no matter how complex they were. He was here on Alta Regina to relax. After so many hundreds of years or so, this Time Lord needed a vacation. He was quite happy lying on the beach and listening to surf come up and down the sand. A group of girls giggled their way past the Doctor. They saw the Doctor just lying on the sand and giggled some more. "Would you girls mind not giggling so loud?" the Doctor surprised them by actually speaking. "It's quite annoying to tell you the truth." The girls just giggled some more and moved along down the beach. *Hmph! Girls,* the Doctor just thought. *Speaking of girls, I wonder how Sarah Jane is doing.* Sarah moved along down the alleyway in one of the more dilapidated sections of the community. She wished that the Doctor was here as well, but seeing as how he was adamant on not taking part Dr. Sangstom's little plan, she could forgive him. It was dark, even though the sun was still up on Alta Regina. Maybe it was the fact the sun was hidden from view by the tall high-rise apartments in this section or the way everything looked droopy. Suddenly a scream came from one of the apartments nearby. Sarah

searched the general area to see where it came from - nobody in sight. It had to have come from one of the apartments. Sarah ran into the nearest building. Amanda Sangstom let out a blood-curdling scream. Hadyn reached in for the kill as he wrapped his cold hands around her small neck. She was scared and hoped that somebody would come to her rescue before it was too late. She looked up her attacker. "Wh-wh-why?" she stammered. "Why are you doing this, Hadyn?" No answer came from him. He was stalwart and looked adamant. He was to kill at all cost necessary, even if Amanda was his lover. These were the same thoughts that ran through his head over and over when he killed Carmen in cold blood. A smile almost seemed to cross his lips. He was almost enjoying these few seconds of torture when he slumped over unconscious on top of Amanda. Amanda looked up. Nothing happened. She wasn't dead, so what happened? "Are you all right, Miss?" a female voice came from above. "Yes," Amanda said as she let the answer come instinctively from her lips, "yes, I think I am - I hope." Sarah Jane rushed over and attempted to pick up Hadyn's unconscious body off of Amanda. "Here, take my hand," she said. Amanda took Sarah's hand and pulled herself up as best she could. She felt disoriented and weak and after what came before. It was understandable. She moved herself over to the kitchen table not knowing what to think or if she was supposed to think at all. Sarah took a drinking glass from the cupboard above the sink and turned on the faucet. After she filled the glass from the tap, she gave is to Amanda, who started crying. "You're crying," observed Sarah. "Are you sure you're okay?" Amanda just nodded. "It wasn't supposed to be like this," she said through her tear-stained eyes. "We were to leave the planet and get away from my father - a textbook romance almost." Sarah noticed the little nuances on Amanda's face and every inflection in her strained voice. Sarah wondered how the two had gotten to know each other, but to be in an abusive relationship was almost to hard to bear of even think of. Amanda had finished her second glass of water by the time she finished her story, which almost seemed like a confession to Sarah. She was lucky to have been rescued at all from the way the story unfolded. Looking up, Amanda finally became aware of who was with her. "I'm sorry," she began to say, "but I don't think I caught your name." Sarah turned around with an almost surprised look on her face. "My name?" she queried, "Oh, the name's Sarah - Sarah Jane Smith." "And mine is Amanda, Amanda Sangstom." SO, DAVE HOW IS YOUR DAUGHTER? Dr. Sangstom looked up. ORG never talked about family matter before, let alone his daughter. He wondered if anything was wrong with Amanda. "She's fine, I suppose," Sangstom replied. "We had a falling out yesterday, but I'm sure she'll get over it." THEN THINGS ARE FINE, DAVE? "As far as I know, ORG." ORG knew something and he was keeping it from him. He had to keep ORG strung along in order to get what he needed to know from this AI computer. "ORG, are you hiding something from me?" Sangstom asked. OF COURSE NOT, DAVE. I WOULD NEVER HIDE ANYTHING FROM YOU. IT IS NOT

IN MY PROGRAMMING. "The why ask about Amanda?" NO REASON. I NOTICED THAT SHE LOOKED DISTRESSED WHEN SHE WAS IN THE MARKETPLACE YESTERDAY. Sangstom started to fume. ORG had the tendency to look in on private matters that other people did, but as a rule never bother with himself or any of his personal matters. What was ORG up to? "Don't you ever go meddling in my personal affairs again!" Sangstom shouted so loud that others outside of his office could hear. "Do you hear me, ORG?!? Never again!" Before ORG could answer, Sangstom's secretary popped her head in the open doorway. "Is everything all right in here, Dr. Sangstom? I heard shouting...." "No, everything's okay, Kristina," Sangstom said as he waved her off. "You can go back to your work." DAVE, I'M SORRY. There was nothing ORG could do or say to relieve Sangstom of his rage. ORG knew something was up with his daughter and Sangstom had to make sure that Amanda wasn't the next target of ORG's maniacal deeds. If only there was a way to make she was safe, he would know what was happening. Sarah went over to the apartment door and opened it up to look outside. The coast was clear as far as she could tell. She looked both ways just to make sure and then turned her head back inside and looked at Amanda. "We have to get you someplace safe," she said. "But why?" Amanda asked as she struggled to get her purse. "It's too dangerous for you to stay here, not with this man trying to kill you." She pointed at the unconscious figure of Hadyn on the sofa. "Where are we going?" Amanda went out the door with Sarah. "I have this friend called the Doctor. He and I are going to help you get away from here, is that clear?" Amanda nodded. "I-I-I just don't understand," she started to cry. "There's no time to explain. We must get out of here." "I don't think you're going anywhere, ladies," a voice came from behind. Sarah and Amanda turned around. It was Hadyn and he looked like he had just gotten up. "I'm afraid that I'm not done with you yet."

Chapter Five: "Welcome Back" Sarah proves she's able. The Doctor goes on the table. ** by K. Michael Wilcox ** "Welcome back, Sarah Jane," a deep, calming voice said. "Here, I'll help you with that." She felt two large, soft hands guide her up into a sitting position. Once her head's throbbing receded, she opened her eyes. "Doctor?" she asked. The face before her grinned. "What happened? How long was I out?" "Only an hour, I'd say," the Doctor said. "Feels like I've been unconscious for months." Sarah looked past the Doctor's head at a group of uniformed security men examining an apartment. She tried turning her head to the side and saw that she was sitting in a doorway. With some effort, she rotated ninety degrees until she could lean back against the doorjamb. Then she turned her head again and looked out into the corridor. Here there were even more security men, most of them

standing at the top of the stairs which led back to street level. One of the men stepped aside, and she saw that Dave Sangstom, the planet's nominal director, was with them. Then she saw why they were all there. At their feet was the body of a young woman. Most of her was on the landing, but her severely bruised head dangled unnaturally over the first step. No one had yet touched the body, and her eyes continued to stare, seemingly right at Sarah. With a shudder, the reporter turned away and looked back at the Doctor. "What happened here?" she asked. "That's what we were hoping you could tell us," Sangstom said as he walked over to where she sat. He made no effort to bend down and consequently towered over her. Sarah tried to think back. "It's a blur, really. I was walking past when I heard someone scream. When I got up here, I saw that woman being choked by a large, half-naked man." "In the hallway?" the Doctor asked. "No, in the apartment," Sarah explained, gesturing with her head and immediately regretting it. "I went to help her. We thought I'd knocked him out, but he woke up so quickly, and we started to run and... that's all I can remember." The Doctor considered. "That makes sense. When you discovered he was awake, you were standing..." He stood just inside the apartment next to where Sarah's foot was. "...Right about here, weren't you?" "Umm, yeah, I think... Oh no." She looked up at the doorframe and saw a smear of blood. "I ran into the wood, didn't I?" The Doctor nodded. "I feel like such an idiot." "Don't," the Doctor said. "It may have saved your life." "Wait a minute," Sangstom said. "You mean the killer ignored your friend and went straight for my... my daughter?" For the first time, Sarah saw a tear roll down his cheek. "What kind of a sick animal do we have here?" The Doctor shook his head. "No, Sangstom, not an animal. An animal kills because it needs to, for food or survival. This was the work of a sadist, someone who killed for the pleasure of watching the terror on his victim's face as she died. That, Mr Sangstom, is something uniquely human." Sarah started to say something but decided to let the Doctor have his moment. Instead, she grabbed the frame behind her and started to pull herself up. She had just reached a standing position when a small man in a drab business suit arrived at the bottom of the stairs. "Is that Amanda?" he asked tonelessly. "Oh my. What happened?" Sangstom crossed the corridor in two steps and stared down at the man. "What took you so long?" "Well," the man droned, "it sounded like something might be wrong, and I got worried, so I stopped at the handers first." Sangstom looked back at the Doctor and Sarah Jane. "That is my daughter's husband, Ed Ford," he explained. Then he started talking to the security officers while the son-in-law just stood downstairs and stared dumbly. "He looks stoned," Sarah whispered to the Doctor. "That's what too many of this place's mental colonics will do to you. I say, you do look rather pale." The Doctor called Sangstom and a couple of the security agents back over. "Sarah Jane needs medical care." "I'm fine," Sarah lied. Then a wave of dizziness hit, and she staggered and fell forward. One of the security men caught her and helped her back to her feet. "We still have questions we need to ask Miss Smith," he said. "Maybe I could use a bit of fresh air," Sarah said.

Whatever the official government line was, Fliss Indie had definitely not chosen to become a hander herself. Rather, her parents signed her up for it on her twelfth birthday and kept the signing bonus for themselves and Fliss's three older brothers and six younger siblings. Even so, Fliss didn't care. She had at the time, she supposed, but those cares were the first to be washed away by ORG, the computer that enhanced and cleansed the handers as well as running everything else on the moon. After two years here and countless sessions in ORG's unloader, it seemed like ancient history. Now, Fliss cared about very little. Fliss stripped off her clothes and dropped into her bed, not bothering to crawl under the covers. Within seconds she was asleep. A few minutes after that, she began to dream. Surprisingly enough, Sarah thought, it seemed to have worked. A few minutes of sitting on the kerb, breathing in the afternoon air, and she felt almost as good as new. Well, except that now she could feel a dull throb where she had a bump on her forehead from her encounter with the doorframe. She looked back up at the sky, then at one of the two security officers sitting with her. "Umm, what time is it?" "Almost 21.30," he answered. "So when does it get dark?" The officers looked at one another for a moment. "In about a fortnight," the second one told her. "Are you ready to answer a few questions?" the first one asked. "I think so. You want me to describe the attacker, right?" They nodded in unison. "He was big, like I'd said, and not wearing much, like he'd come from the beach." "Or a hander?" Sarah thought a moment. "The brain drain guys? Don't know. I've not met one." "That's fine. Do you remember anything else like hair or eye colour?" "Black and green, in that order." The guards looked at each other again. One placed a finger in his ear and spoke into his wrist. "Witness's description matches ORG's misper. Aye, sir. No, sir, she seems fine now. Aye, sir. Aye. Over and out." He let his hand fall and turned to the other officer. "We're to escort Miss Smith back to her rooms." Sarah considered objecting, but her heart wasn't in it. Frankly, she just wanted a few dozen aspirin and a good night's sleep. Sangstom looked at the security report, then handed it to the Doctor. His friend had left some time before, and Ed had slipped out soon after. Why he had ever thought it a good idea to arrange for Amanda to marry a cleansing addict escaped him. No, that wasn't true; he just wished it did. "'Escaped before unloading'?" the Doctor quoted. "It seems your system isn't perfect after all." Sangstom sighed. "Post-client violence happens sometimes, Doctor. That first victim, Miss Bunsen, herself once killed two other handers before we caught and unloaded her." He looked around to make sure that no security agents were within earshot, then leaned forward and lowered his voice. "The problem, Doctor, is that earlier, Mr Neville's file said that he hadn't had a client before he killed her." "The file's been altered," the Doctor said. "And you know who did it." In the corner of the room, a monitor turned itself on, and an image of an eye appeared. As the two men spoke, the eye looked from one pair of lips to the other. Then, as quickly as it appeared, the eye vanished and

the monitor switched off. Ed Ford sat in the waiting room and twiddled his thumbs. There were some magazines on the table before him, but they were all pointlessly angst-free celebrity gossip and children's games. Besides, he'd read them all. When he'd seen his wife's corpse, he knew he'd have to come back here for another cleansing. It wasn't that he felt sorrow for losing her; that left him strangely unaffected. But he had seen a body, and somewhere deep down there was some guilt over the lack of grief. Whatever, it'd soon be gone. "We're ready for you, sir," the receptionist said to him. A man in a white smock escorted him to a small room with a padded table, then left him there, not bothering to close the door. Without really thinking about it, Ed undressed and lay facedown on the table. A couple minutes later, a naked girl entered and closed the door behind her. She brushed some of her brown ringlets from in front of her face and smiled sheepishly. Ed grinned back, then closed his eyes. Consequently, he didn't see as Fliss drew the knife from under the table. Sarah Jane glanced back to make sure that her guards were still behind her. They were, but she'd got a bit ahead of them again. So she waited for them to catch up. Though she'd never been a fast walker, Sarah was easily outpacing these two. Perhaps, she thought, gravity here was lower than she was used to, or maybe the throbbing in her head was giving her a reason to pick up the pace. The two officers had almost caught up when Sarah saw her assailant on a first-floor balcony. Before she could say anything, he'd leaped to the ground directly behind one of the security men. He immediately reached out and snapped the officer's neck. The other agent started to draw his gun, but the man tackled him at the waist and knocked him to the pavement. He then straddled the officer's chest and grabbed for the neck. Sarah looked around for something to use against him, but all she saw close to hand was the officer's corpse. She couldn't see his truncheon, which must have been under the body, but his gun was visible. She quickly unholstered it and pointed it at the attacker. "Let him go!" she screamed. The man ignored her. "I said, let him go or I'll shoot!" Still, he seemed not to know she was there. Reluctantly, Sarah carefully aimed for his arm and fired. A beam lanced out of the gun and struck Hadyn in the head. For a moment, his skull was visible through a glowing blue haze. Then the light faded, and his corpse, scorched from the neck up, fell onto the officer. With an effort, the officer disentangled himself and sat up. "Left it a bit long there, didn't you?" he croaked. Having learned what he could at the murder scene, the Doctor had started to go to the tourists' lodgings, but the security officers had insisted on sending a three-man escort along. Then, halfway to the lodgings, two of them had grabbed him by the shoulders, and they were now dragging him into a pastel-coloured building. They entered through a sliding glass door and stopped in the waiting room. "Oh my," the Doctor said, "is this where I sign up for one of those emotional enemas?" "Any rooms open?" the lead officer asked the receptionist. "'Fraid not. Just had a PCV, and the hander's still on the loose." "Another one?" The receptionist nodded, then looked away as her terminal beeped at her. "What do you know, you're being given a room. What's this guy done?" She looked at the Doctor, who simply smiled and winked at her. She shrank

back, and the Doctor frowned. "Room 13, end of the hall." The officer thanked her and led the group to the appointed room. Like all the others, it was small and empty apart from a couple folding chairs and the all-important padded table. The lead officer took the Doctor's hat and scarf and tossed them into a corner. Then the ones who had been holding the Doctor pulled off his long coat, unable to hide their surprise that he had another, identical coat on under it. Tossing the first coat aside, they yanked off the second, but there was a third beneath that. Undeterred, they removed this third one, then a fourth, fifth, and sixth. "What is this?" the lead officer demanded. The Doctor smiled again. "I once had this friend named Bartholomew Cubbins...." The officer slapped him across the face. "Shut up!" He turned to the other officers. "Take them all off!" One officer grabbed the collar of the Doctor's shirt and pulled on that. Buttons ricocheted about the small room as the shirt was torn off the Doctor, taking his coats with it and leaving the Doctor in just his trousers and a sleeveless undershirt. The officers slammed the Doctor facedown onto the table, then yanked away the undershirt. "Well, if you're going to do it that way," the Doctor said. "Hello," a new voice said. The Doctor looked at the doorway and saw a woman in her twenties smile at him. She was naked from the waist up, but her long blonde hair covered her breasts. She stepped forward and gently placed her hands on the Doctor's shoulders. Instantly, her body went rigid and she screamed.

Chapter Six, in which one Doctor remembers very little, another Doctor remembers too much, and something quite terrible happens at the end. ** by Tony Whitt ** "Hello," a new voice said. The Doctor looked at the doorway and saw a woman in her twenties smile at him. She was naked from the waist up, but her long blonde hair covered her breasts. She stepped forward and gently placed her hands on the Doctor's shoulders. Instantly, her body went rigid and she screamed. [Thirty Years Later] At the top of the tower, in the windowless room, things still crawl, but their movement is softer as they watch the two men conversing in the room. They watch as the younger-looking of the two lowers the older-looking man into the single chair at the centre of the room. They watch as the younger-looking man peers into the older-looking man's eyes with great care and frowns worriedly. They watch as the younger-looking man as he seems to realize that maybe this visit wasn't such a good idea after all. But appearances are deceptive, and they do not know how much the Doctor wants, needs, to hear the rest and to be reminded of what happened, to find out how everything turned out after he left. They do not know how little he can remember of the last time he was here, or the urgent need he has to recall his part in the disaster. They do not know how short a time he has worn this face, or the fact that he is several times older than the man who appears his senior.

"Maybe this isn't the best time for this, after all," the Doctor says, hoping despite his best intentions that the prisoner will continue. "This is the only time you'll ever have, sweetheart," the prisoner rasps, trying to pull air into artificial lungs that haven't worked properly in decades. "Besides, this allows me to ask you some questions, too. I don't want to shuffle off this mortal coil, such as it is, without knowing a few things that I've been in the dark about all these years. Is that food?" The Doctor frowns at the non-sequitur, then follows the prisoner's gaze to his chest, and the fresh stalk of celery pinned there. Wordlessly and without hesitation, he unpins it and hands it to the prisoner, who tears into it as if it were a three-course meal. "Ah," the prisoner says, spewing bits of vegetable as he speaks, "not the grandest last meal that anyone ever got, but I'm sure it'll be good for my teeth." The Doctor grins ruefully and then casts a glance into the shadows. He stares directly at the things that creep in the cold blackness, and despite the seeming kindness of his pleasant and open face, the warning in his eyes is clear: You won't have him. Not until we're done, and maybe not even then. I won't allow it. Appearances are deceptive, but they get the message. They back off and cower in the corners. The Doctor turns back to the prisoner, who has finished his small repast and now belches softly. "I'll answer anything you want," he replies. "I wasn't much help to you back then, I'm afraid, and I want to make up for it somehow." "In that case," the prisoner says, trailing off as his eyes unfocus. He remembers a time just before the darkness fell forever on the moon of the fourth planet, and one of the many things that happened during that time which has puzzled him all this time. "What in the hell DID you do to that poor girl, anyway?" [Thirty Years Ago] As the woman took her hands from the Doctor's shoulders and continued to scream like a wounded animal, the Doctor shot upward from the table. His eyes rolled back into his head, and after a few convulsive jerks of his entire body, he fell back onto the table on his side, seemingly dead. "What the hell...?!" one of the security officers shouted. As his partner grabbed the still-screaming hander and restrained her from hurting herself, he rushed to the Doctor's side and tried to find a pulse. "Damn! ORG said to relax him, not kill him!" He placed his finger in his ear and spoke into his wrist just as two more guards ran into the room to help with the hander. "Emergency, Block 4, Room 13 -- we need restraints and a resuscitation team, stat! Top Priority!" He turned and saw that the hander had somehow knocked out his partner and was making short work of the other two guards, using some form of aikido that he'd never seen before. Remembering ORG's instructions to him earlier, he removed his pistol and set it on stun before firing on the hander. A blue haze enveloped her entire body for a moment, and she collapsed to the floor with a frustrated sigh. The door opened, and the restraint team rushed into the room. "Right in the nick of time, eh, fellows?" the officer rasped. "Never mind -- get her out of here and unloaded ASAP!" As the resuscitation team arrived and began to examine the Doctor, the officer looked at the prone form and muttered, "What the hell kind of demons are you carrying around, anyway...?"

Sangstom sat at his desk and cried like a child. It had been the first time he'd allowed himself to fully give in to his emotions since finding out about Amanda. It was true that they hadn't been close, especially after he'd made that awful marriage arrangement for her with Ed. He knew that she wanted to get away from Alta Regina any way she could, but the same rules that kept him here had bound her. He had wanted so badly to make it all up to her, and now he would never have a chance. The thought of losing that chance was almost enough to send him in search of a hander, to finally expatiate himself of all the guilt and pain, and to hell with any thoughts of rebellion he might have had. It was almost enough. The emotionless voice of ORG cut in over his reverie and stopped those thoughts cold. I'M SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS, DAVE. I DO HOPE YOU'LL ALLOW ME TO OFFER SOME CONDOLENCE AFTER THIS MORNING'S... DISAGREEMENT. Sangstom pulled himself together and put on a smile he did not feel before turning to the terminal. "Yes, yes, of course, ORG. I know you were only trying to show concern for my daughter." In truth, he knew this wasn't true at all, but keeping on ORG's good side was for the best of them all. I MAY HAVE SOME NEWS THAT MAY COMFORT YOU IN THAT RESPECT, the voice continued. HADYN NEVILLE HAS BEEN ELIMINATED. THE ESCORT WE ASSIGNED TO THE DOCTOR'S YOUNG FRIEND WAS ATTACKED BY NEVILLE, AND ONE OF THE GUARDS WAS KILLED. This caught Sangstom's attention. "Killed? Is she all right? Where was the Doctor when all this happened?" THE GIRL IS UNHARMED. SHE WAS THE ONE WHO SHOT AND KILLED NEVILLE, IN FACT. HER PROFICIENCY WITH A GUN SEEMS TO RIVAL THAT OF OUR GUARDS. Sangstom waved his hand irritably. "Never mind that, ORG...where is she now?" SHE ASKED HER ESCORT TO BE TAKEN TO THE DOCTOR, SO I HAVE ARRANGED FOR HER TO BE BROUGHT TO HIM IN BLOCK 4, ROOM 13. "What is he doing there?" Sangstom asked suspiciously. I HAD THE GUARDS BRING HIM THERE FOR THERAPY, OF COURSE, the AI replied casually. HE APPEARS TO HAVE HAD A... REACTION TO THE TREATMENT. Sangstom stood up. "What?! Did he agree to this? Why wasn't I informed?" HE NEITHER AGREED NOR DISAGREED, ORG said. THE GUARDS WHO BROUGHT HIM TO THE ROOM REPORTED THAT HE DID NOT RESIST. I'M CONFUSED, DAVE -- WE HAD ALWAYS PLANNED TO HAVE HIM RELAXED. WHY SHOULD YOU NEED TO BE INFORMED OF A SIMPLE THERAPY SESSION? He didn't dare reply to that question truthfully -- if he did, ORG would know about the deal he had made with the Doctor and Sarah to investigate for him. He had a horrible suspicion that ORG was about to find out anyway. Ignoring the question entirely, he asked, "What happened to him? And what has happened to the hander who treated him?" HE PLACED HIMSELF INTO A PROTECTIVE COMA, BUT HE APPEARS TO BE CONSCIOUS NOW. HANDER SELA MIRANDA, ENCLASS 20, ID-NC179/00/2B, IS CURRENTLY BEING PREPPED FOR ROUTINE UNLOADING. Before Sangstom could respond, a chime sounded. NEW INFORMATION: I HAVE JUST BEEN INFORMED THAT YOUR SON-IN-LAW, ED FORD, HAS BEEN MURDERED, AND THE HANDER SCHEDULED FOR HIS THERAPY AT THE TIME OF HIS MURDER, FLISS INDIE, ENCLASS 17, ID-AT916/000/6S, HAS GONE MISSING. I HAVE DISPATCHED PATROLS TO SEARCH FOR HER. Sangstom reeled from the sheer amount of bad news. His plans with the Doctor were about to be revealed; Ed was dead (though that was probably the only good news he'd had all day); and yet another hander was likely to be

involved. It was all coming apart at the seams. "I've got to go see the Doctor," Sangstom said, rising quickly and heading for the door. "He might have a theory as to what's going on here. In the meantime, delay processing that hander -- examining her might give us some more information to go on!" As he left the room, ORG processed the orders and then promptly ignored them. It was determined to know why the Doctor hadn't wanted to be processed, and why Sangstom had not insisted upon it. But first ORG had to insure that Sangstom could not interfere. Fliss ran through the corridors, careful to avoid the patrols of guards which she was sure were now after her. Her mind was in a state of complete confusion -- she had no idea why she had done what she had done, but she knew for certain that she would be liquidated if they found her. She was also aware of voices in her head, voices that had followed her into consciousness from her dreams, the dreams she wasn't supposed to be having. /We all do it,/ the voices sighed. /We all do it. We all do it./ She recognized the voice -- it was poor Carmen's -- but she didn't recognize the memory. It was as if she were seeing the dead girl talking to someone else. Fliss found a deserted cul-de-sac, far from the garish lights of the main corridors, and slid painfully to the floor. Her breath came in desperate gasps, and she felt like she'd twisted an ankle in her desperate run. The world began to blur before her eyes, and she slipped into unconsciousness. Then the dreams began again, and the voices told her something completely new. The guard whose life she had saved escorted Sarah to the Doctor's room. When she'd heard that he'd undergone the relaxation treatment, she felt a mixture of concern and anger, mostly directed at him. The idiot! she thought. He's always doing something like this! Why does he think he's invulnerable? It's not like he can't be killed. I've already seen him die once.... Sarah closed off that line of thought before she got any further. For a long time now, though, she had been feeling a growing sense of apprehension about her travels with the Doctor. She used to enjoy the idea of going off into dangerous situations and coming out victorious, no matter what jolts she might experience along the way. It made her feel stronger, somehow, to know that no matter what alien beasties menaced her as if she were some heroine from a 50's B-grade picture, she could hold her own and help the Doctor beat them. It generally gave her feminist heart a great deal of satisfaction. Lately, though, she'd been the target of those alien beasties a lot more often, generally with the Doctor arriving only at the very last moment, and she'd become more concerned at the idea that the Doctor would get himself killed and leave her stranded and at their mercy. What good was visiting some exotic planet like this one, or traveling to 15th century Italy, if you were constantly in danger of being left there without friends or help, or finishing up dead? Quashing her fear and anger down, she entered the room and found the Doctor sitting up on the corner of the bed and grinning like a madman. Nothing different there, then, she thought. She breathed a sigh of relief and even returned his smile. "Well," she said, moving to his side and sitting down, "I expected to find you in one of those healing trances or something. How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine," he replied, turning to look at her with wide eyes. 'I haven't felt so relaxed in ages!' He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bag. "I'm the Doctor, by the way. Delighted to meet you! Would you like a jelly baby?" The restraint team brought Sela Miranda into Sangstom's office, fully expecting Sangstom himself to be there to supervise the unloading. When ORG itself instructed them to hook her into the machine, however, they did not question it. Obviously Mr. Sangstom was off looking into these murders. And if you couldn't trust ORG, who could you trust, anyway? Fliss Indie awoke with a new sense of purpose. After several minutes of not-so-gentle coaxing, the Doctor blinked his eyes and stared at her intensely. Then he beamed again, and this time the smile didn't remind Sarah of those vacuous grins she'd seen whilst doing her story on the state of modern mental hospitals a few years ago. "Sarah Jane! Well, isn't this nice! I'd wondered where you'd gotten off to...." He frowned for a moment and shook his head. "Come to think of it, I was wondering where I'D gotten off to." "What happened?" The Doctor got up and began pacing the short length of the room, his expression hesitant and bewildered. He dug into the bag, brought out an orange jelly baby, and munched on it thoughtfully. "Well, they... they RELAXED me, just as they said they would. Or rather, NOT just as they said they would." He stopped at the far end of the room and pointed at her with the now-headless jelly baby. "Do you remember what Sangstom told us about the process and how it works?" Sarah shrugged. "I didn't actually follow most of it, to tell you the truth. Something to do with suppression of biochemicals, wasn't it?" "Modification of the amygdala on an electrochemical level to suppress the chemicals that produce violent emotions," he replied grimly. "Anger, jealousy, pride, hate, fear, guilt -- all of those darker emotions which make the positive emotions more meaningful. Such a process, in theory, should have nothing to do with the memory engrams, as they're stored in a different part of the brain altogether." He then turned and fixed her with an angry stare, and for a moment, Sarah couldn't be sure if she were the target of all that pent-up anger or not. "But the process *I* underwent was a savage rape of the mind, pulling away all that was negative and replacing it with nothing, despite all my efforts to resist." "Why did you let them do it in the first place?" Sarah asked, some of her earlier anger at his cavalier attitude towards his own life rising back to the surface. "I mean, don't you have some sort of Time Lord whammy to keep you from being 'savagely raped' like that?" "Yes," the Doctor replied, ignoring her tone, "and without that 'whammy,' as you put it, I'd have been just as 'relaxed' as Sangstom's sonin-law. I'd never have remembered who you were at all. But I wanted to see what the process was, to try to understand what they've been doing to these poor devils. At first, I thought the worst it could be was a removal of the negative emotions, the 'evil' as it were, which would have been bad enough. I encountered something like that once before, with UNIT. Ask the Brigadier to tell you about the Keller Machine sometime." He grinned suddenly at her for a brief moment. "Just make sure to promise him you

won't write anything about it first." Sarah grinned momentarily. "But... you said this is worse?" "Far worse, Sarah," the Doctor muttered, popping the rest of the beheaded candy into his mouth. "This process accesses the very memory engrams themselves, makes a copy, removes the negative associative emotions, and then replaces them. The handers then carry those memories until they're unloaded. Hence the incidents of violence. They become that person, in a way." "You're joking," Sarah said. "They... clean up memories? Like they were a load of old laundry? That can't be possible, surely!" "Why not?" the Doctor replied. "If emotions can be suppressed at the biochemical level, then suppressing them within the memories themselves can't be that far out. The brain is a vast computer, Sarah. Like any computer, the programs within it can be copied, erased, and even rewritten, given the right tools. Or in this case, the wrong tools. The question is, what happens to the original programs after they've been copied?" He turned to look at her with tired, world-weary eyes. "Who becomes caretaker of all those negative memories?" "I'm afraid I have the answer to your question, Doctor," Sangstom said, as he walked into the room, a terrified expression on his face. "ORG is the caretaker... as I've long feared." He closed the door behind him and stared at them grimly. "I told you something has gone wrong on Alta Regina." The girl's form was still twitching with pain and horror as ORG plugged itself into her consciousness to begin the unloading. Immediately, the connection was overwhelmed with images and memories, alien beyond belief, as 749 years of experience flooded into the computer's memory banks. Every unloading was its own reward to ORG, as it acquired more and more insight into what drove the human mind every time it received a new set of dark emotions. But this was far beyond anything the AI had ever known before, and somewhere in the ever-darkening recesses of its memory core, the computer began to change. The hander who was once Sela Miranda opened her eyes one last time, and screamed. Fliss made her way cautiously along the brightly lit corridors of the complex. She had managed to avoid all the patrols so far with great ease. It was as if she had an extended sense of her surroundings and could tell if she was about to be discovered, so that she could then duck quickly into hiding. And in a few rare instances, the voices in her mind would suddenly shout /Behind you!/ or /Look out!/ in just enough time to allow her to avoid being caught. She was gratified for their help, especially when Carmen, dear, sweet, Carmen, spoke to her. Soon, she caught sight of her goal, just as a door closed between them. She moved slowly towards it. "This is why I've never allowed myself to undergo the process, Doctor," Sangstom said. "ORG would learn far too much about me and my plans. Unfortunately, I'm afraid he may learn it all anyway, now that he's had you put through it." "Is there any way to stop the unloading, Sangstom?" the Doctor asked. He moved to Sangstom and placed his hands on the younger man's shoulders. "It's absolutely vital that ORG be kept from those memories!" "I couldn't agree with you more!" Sangstom replied. "But I'm sure ORG

will ignore my orders to delay the procedure, and if it sends out an unloading order on its own, that order would supersede mine, anyway. I came here hoping you could help me stop it." "We must, Sangstom," the Doctor said, motioning for Sarah to get up and come to his side. "If ORG gets its positronic paws on my memories, you'll have a lot more than just a few deaths on your hands." Sangstom's eyes widened in disbelief, but the Doctor's tone convinced him. "Come on, then, follow me." He moved to the door and reached it just as it opened. A slim hand holding a knife shot through the opening, slashing at his right shoulder. The knife cut deeply into his flesh, and he cried out and fell backwards as Fliss leapt into the room, her face a mixture of pleasure and determination. "I'm sorry, Dave," she said. "But we all do it, you see. We all do it." The Doctor and Sarah pulled Sangstom further into the room as she slowly advanced upon them, smiling serenely. Meanwhile, in the computer centre, a terrible beauty was being born.

Chapter Seven: "A Great Big Worm in the Rotten Core of Paradise" ** by Gregg Smith ** 'Daggers of the Mindless' Dave's knees buckled and he collapsed to the floor, clutching his wounded shoulder. His free hand automatically touched a red button on his belt. Fliss walked into the room and stood over him. Her mouth was hanging open, a far-away smile. Her face was drained, her determined eyes dead, and Dave's fresh spurt of blood across her hand ran over dry, congealed stains from an earlier killing. Dave stared up at her, confused and terrified, and then he looked over his shoulder at the Doctor. "Help me," he wheezed. "Hello," said the Doctor, walking forward and looking at Fliss. She glanced upwards, away from Dave, and her eyes locked with the Doctor's. In one of those strange moments of clarity that we hear about so often, Dave noticed that the Doctor hadn't dressed himself properly after his relaxation. His ridiculous scarf, usually wrapped so safely around his shoulders, was draping down to his crooked elbows and trailing onto the floor. "Now, I want everyone to remain calm," the Doctor continued. Dave saw Sarah backing away from the situation, to the side and out of Fliss' view. Clever girl, he thought. "We've all been through a lot recently, but I'm sure we can sort all of this out." The Doctor was standing over Dave now, within Fliss' reach. And then, suddenly, his left hand flashed out, round Fliss' wrist. And Fliss' wrist was suddenly wrapped in dusky coloured material. He was gripping his scarf, holding it tightly between both of his hands, sweeping it down as he leapt over Dave and round, behind Fliss. The scarf seemed to pull tight in the air, and Dave saw that Sarah was holding the other end and running behind Fliss. The Doctor and Sarah passed each other in the open doorway. Dave was sure they were moving fast, but he was a bit stunned so their pace seemed almost leisurely to

him. Fliss' knife arm was pulled down and flat against her body. The scarf pulled tight around her waist and thighs, like a noose around the neck of a condemned man as the trap door is released beneath his feet. She pitched forward and landed on top of Dave. Sarah stamped on Fliss' wrist and the hander dropped the dagger. The Doctor swiftly knelt down beside her. "It's over now," he said in hushed tones. "You can relax. Sleep." And then Fliss rolled off Dave and onto the floor, dozing soundlessly. And then the lights went out. Completely. "It's a power drain," said Dave from the floor. In the sunlight filtered from the corridor, the Doctor and Sarah helped Dave to his feet. They undid the top of his shirt and exposed the wound. "My jacket," he pointed to his grey jacket, folded neatly over the back of a chair. "There's a healing patch in the left pocket." Sarah found the patch and gave it to Dave, who put it over the wound on his shoulder. "How do you know it's a power drain, and not ORG?" asked Sarah. "Oh, it probably is ORG. It's the only thing that could be using all the power, I imagine. Though I hate to think what it's using the power for. But the power is being tapped and used elsewhere, ORG hasn't just switched the lights off. If that were the case, the emergency systems, over which ORG has no control, would have come on. No, there's no power for lights. Or for the doors. I'm assuming ORG's terminals will still be operating. I activated a distress signal, alerting my guards and the company. Emergency teams should be on their way right now." "But if all the systems have shut down, how will they get in here?" asked Sarah. "Erm. Yes, that may be a problem. We'll just have to hope for the best. I'll go back to my office, try and talk to ORG from there." "That may not be enough," said the Doctor. "Doctor, I know a lot has happened. A lot of terrible things. But I must try all I can to save ORG from itself. To stop it without killing it. ORG is so special, one of the first and only of its type. Two centuries and it hasn't become obsolete, despite the impossibility of upgrading it or transferring its systems." "Only because the next step in computation process is something humanity is too afraid to take. And possibly with good reason. I understand. But ORG has become very dangerous. It's more than just freeing your society now." "ORG can't be meaning to do any of this. It's good. Doing what I've had... may have to do to it could kill me." "What can we do?" said Sarah. "As I said, I can try and control ORG from control. We'll go to my domicile, and make our plans there." "What about the doors?" "There are no doors between here and there, and I had them install an old, manual door on my domicile, like my office. Hinge and bracket is so stylish." something is born in control Sela was sprawled on the bed in Sangstom's office with the interface at the base of her skull still hooked into by the ORG control. Her eyes were staring blankly at the ceiling. The room was dim, the only light coming from the displays on control -- a multi-coloured half-light. Sela spasmed, her limbs jolting up from the table. Her mouth opened, but there was no sound. The displays flared, filling the room with colours and shades.

'The Day ORG Went Mad' Using the Doctor's pen light, Dave located four torches, a miner's lamp, a few dozen vanilla-scented candles and some matches. The three were now using one of the torches, the lamp and the pen to find batteries for the other torches. The Doctor suddenly stood stock-still and looked at Dave. "What exactly are you a doctor of, Doctor Sangstom?" "Biomechanical neurology, mainly." "Really? Fascinating. Theoretical studies too?" "Yes." "Then what are your views on anorthic, cyclical, Boolean ganglia models?" "The growth patterns are outrageously random, the thought modulation too immoderate to sustain the emotional evolution such a system would demand and too limited and rapid to allow adequate human interaction." The Doctor was nodding along to Dave's words while Sarah switched off and got on with searching for the batteries. "And if constructed in real life," continued Dave, "such a system would break down within half an hour. It couldn't possibly sustain itself." The Doctor stopped mid nod and looked at Dave with eyes wide. Then he grinned. "You've never met the Krotons." "The who?" "A crystalline SAMVOLSH race. Perfect examples of thinking through anorthic simplification cycles." Dave looked at the Doctor doubtfully. "And what's your speciality?" "Roast duck with mango and peach slices on a caramel tart." "I see." "Got them," said Sarah, cradling half a dozen fat batteries out of a drawer. "We'd better hurry. Whatever ORG has planned, it will move very quickly." "I just don't understand. ORG has never killed before, or been responsible for killing. It must be a fault, a glitch in the system." "I think it's much more than that. ORG has become a threat to all of us. I imagine it has some very unpleasant things waiting for us. And more in the pipeline." "But, how? Why is it doing these things, leaving the handers with bad vibes in them? Why won't it talk to me anymore? Why would it have more planned?" "If you don't face the things inside you, deal with them, they grow and grow. That's what is happening to ORG. You have turned him into a giant capacitor for the human id, a living electronic picture of Dorian Gray, embodied and loosed upon its nurturers. But more than that, the process has involved the suffering of countless people. ORG is faulty, and we have to deal with that. But what has been going on here is no better. Not just ORG's management, your entire system. You've turned an advanced technical process into some form of alternative healing or spiritual cleansing, and exploited people in the process." "I know. I've never liked it. Once I understood, I didn't want to be part of it. But what could I do? This planet is a profit-making industry, ORG is the product and the handers are just resources to be exploited. And I'm in position to stop that." "No, no you aren't. Whatever is happening to ORG, whatever it is doing, it must be stopped. With my knowledge and its capabilities, and above all the neurological disorders it is suffering, it would be far too powerful.

Too dangerous." "Neurological disorders?" said Sarah. "Doctor, it's a computer." "That doesn't make any difference, Sarah." "No, I know. But since it is a computer, why don't we just..." The Doctor held up his hand to interrupt her. "If I could just finish, Sarah Jane. ORG still needs help. And so do the people it could threaten. The cybernetic macro-viral deconstructionists of Trinaxia have a saying: the most powerful weapon in the universe is an off-switch. Of course they're biased. We may have to switch ORG off altogether." "But, if we do that, where will all the people get their relaxation from? How will we drain their brains?" "Doctor Sangstom," he paused to put his arm around Dave's shoulders. "Have you ever heard of something called television?" "Television? Oh yes, television." "I was just about to suggest turning ORG off," Sarah whispered into the Doctor's ear. "Were you?" he whispered back. "Doctor Sangstom, if we can find some other way to stop ORG, to avoid switching him off, then I promise I will stay and help bring an end to the present management." "It's hopeless, Doctor. You can't fight the board of directors. They're too cunning, too powerful." "Yes, well, first things first." "What about all the handers and tourists?" asked Sarah. "We have to deal with ORG first. Then I'll try and use the systems here to download the handers affected by the bad memories and emotions." "And with any luck, most of the tourists will have been evacuated down to Alta Helena when I sent my distress signal. So, are you going to come to control with me? I'm not sure it would be safe for us all." "Do you have any plans of the complex? I'd like to see what other options we have," said the Doctor. "Sure." Dave took a small cube out of his pocket. It had buttons on four sides, and he pressed one. The cube projected a green hologram, a three-dimensional map of the complex. "That's where we are," Dave pointed to a small red square three-quarters of the way up the building. "That's ORG's memory," he pointed to the top. "The central elevator, the main download areas, the downtime rooms, cubicles, private rooms, and the power centre." He traced his finger around, through the display. "Well, that certainly gives me an idea. Can I borrow this?" "Of course, if you think it will help you. The central elevator will be inactive, with the power drain. So, I'm afraid we're stuck on this floor." "Come along, Sarah. We're going to do some exploring. Good luck, Dave." The Doctor grinned. "I may be along later to give you a hand. Talk to ORG myself." "Is that wise?" said Sarah. "I think ORG is a child." The Doctor suddenly spoke more loudly, and more to the walls than to Sarah or Dave. "He's certainly behaving like a child!" He came back down again. "An artificial child, but still a child. And I always get on well with children." He started off down the corridor, and Sarah followed, flashing a smile at Dave before facing the Doctor's back. "Always get on well with children?" she said. "What about the dauphin of Azure?" "Apart from him," replied the Doctor, flapping his pocketed hand in a circle and swishing his jacket with it. "And those orphans in Newgate?" "Nobody's perfect, Sarah Jane." "And..."

break down time Panic had flooded the ORG complex when the lights had gone out. There were already reports of more killings, and the darkness and isolation only heightened paranoia. The security guards decided that proaction was the course of the day, and started killing handers to be on the safe side. They wiped out a couple of dozen people before they actually encountered some who were suffering from emotional instability. Of course, they weren't prepared for victims who actually fought back, and three handers with murderous intent and a couple of guns between them killed virtually the entire security staff. Many tourists were killed in the crossfire, but they were lucky. A few waiting for relaxation found themselves taking part in what could be best described as psychopathic living art. Their skin cut open and their organs drawn out while they were still breathing. Their bodies chained and left dangling from the ceiling, like angels or birds of prey, while fluids drained from their bodies. A young accountant was crucified on one of the relaxation couches. The couch was then hoisted against a wall, and his skin was sliced and peeled back from his chest. The mad hander doing this decided to give her client a good look, and slashed the muscle tissue across the bridge of his nose. His eyes popped out of his skull and dangled on his cheeks, looking down at his torso. Outside the complex, handers stalked the sun-drenched streets and beaches of the moon. They found new victims, tourist after tourist being cut down at leisure. And the streets ran with blood, as streets the galaxy over have before. 'Lost in the Funhouse' The Doctor and Sarah were approaching the centre of the ORG complex, where more recent extensions and improvements gave way to the old, cold stone so typical of colonial buildings. These parts of the building were as old as ORG itself. "We're heading for the central column, aren't we?" "That's right, Sarah. I think there's a better way of talking to ORG. "Can't we just destroy ORG? After everything it's done. Not just these new deaths, the entire way of life here." "It was just doing what it was programmed to do." "An excuse?" "An explanation." "But it's sentient. Doesn't it have a choice." "All sentient beings see and operate in the world according to some form of programming. ORG is just an exaggeration of that. Perhaps it could have chosen resistance. But it's never really been allowed to, never seen the alternatives open to it. It's been kept in the dark, and filled with darkness. The people behind ORG are more dangerous in the long term. ORG has lost its senses. But those who have exploited people's weaknesses here never lost theirs. The business of happiness." "Not sure I'm a huge fan of 'happiness.'" "You just have to understand it properly." "But you said ORG was dangerous. Even if we stop it this time, who'll save everyone the next time it has a personal crisis or starts being neurotic?" "We still can't destroy ORG if there's another way. We don't have the

right to end its existence completely." "Really?" "Intelligent and capable computers are an immensely important to human development. Computers have touched the lives of every human born since nineteen sixty, directly or indirectly." "Like the one that nearly destroyed London in the summer of sixty-six?" "Or the computer that won medals for protecting London during that rocket attack in nineteen-sixty-one." "What rocket attack?" "What? Listen, I don't want to have to destroy ORG." "OK, I understand. Couldn't you do what you did with that Mordee computer?" "That was just a malfunctioning machine. I could directly interface with that without threat to my own mind. ORG is different, a sentient artificial intelligence, as self-aware as a human, a being in its own right. Some of my memories have already been transferred -- the darker ones. I could transfer the rest of my mind, but I'd greatly risk wiping my own brain rather than just copying it. Whatever I do is going to hurt ORG. I wish there were some other way. And if I try memory transfer again, the feedback could destroy me." "What about just deleting the corrupted files?" "What, like the relaxation process does with the people here?" "Ah," said Sarah. "Well, when you put it that way." "Yes. Besides, it could take a long time to track down the corrupted files. His memory is very large." "How large?" "Four million bigabytes." "And that means?" "Four times ten to the power of eighteen bytes of memory. Roughly speaking. Ah, here we are." The Doctor pointed at a large door at the end of the corridor they were walking down. "Through there is the central column -- the elevator, and the foundations of the building." "Can you open it?" The Doctor looked at Sarah, almost offended. "Of course. I can use that maintenance panel. From this side, anyway. I'm not too sure about opening it from the other side. Depends if there is maintenance access on that side as well." "Then, if the door closes behind us, won't we be stuck?" "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it." The Doctor smiled and took out his sonic screwdriver. He removed the square cover of the maintenance panel and started fiddling with the controls inside. "Most of the complex has been constructed or reconstructed over the lifetime of this colony," he said as he worked. "But the central column was built in the twenty-seventh century and has been in use ever since." "I thought you said this system wasn't colonised until the twentyninth." "What? No, that's when we are now. You really should pay attention. ORG has been in operation for a little over two centuries. Under the control of numerous directors. But it seems to have only developed these malfunctions within the past few days." "Doctor? You were saying?" "Oh, yes." He stopped working on the door and took out the hologram cube. "This ladder runs parallel to the lift -- which will be inactive with the power drain. It is an emergency access system, and will allow me to enter ORG directly, penetrate the computer." "And?" "There are two possibilities, Sarah. The power systems in the base of

the complex. If they could be shut down, ORG would be powerless. His memory may also be instantly wiped. But it has to be done manually. Or there's the central processor. Talk to ORG directly, make it listen, try to help it. And if that fails, deactivate its neuronetic capabilities." "Deactivate it?" "Rip out its intelligenic cells. Stop it thinking. Wash its brain clean. Two options. But which one should I try? The electronic personality, fifteen storeys up: or the rude mechanicals, thirty storeys down? The heart?" He pointed at the base on the central tower, and then drew his finger up to the top. "Or the soul?" "Why not both?" "Sarah, even I have limitations." "You try talking to it. I'll pull the plug." "But, Sarah..." "There isn't much choice, Doctor. We can't risk not doing everything possible." "It will be dangerous. According to these plans, the power controls are protected by a phobic resonator." "A phobic what?" "Resonator," the Doctor repeated the word with relished exaggeration, finding sibilance where there really shouldn't be any. "Centuries old technology, developed by the CIA around your time. It's such an efficient and powerful device it is still in use all these centuries later. Deadly." "Great." "Sarah..." "No, go on. What does this resonator do?" "It will send out magnetic waves that stimulate the fear centres of your brain. You will have to face your greatest phobias and fears." "You mean, it will send whatever I fear most after me. Where would it get it from? And what if I'm most afraid of tight spaces, or something?" "It will only make you think your greatest fears are present. You will believe you are confronted by what terrifies you most, and your body chemistry will react as if you were. There are two options. You must control your fear, convince yourself that whatever it is isn't really there. Or you must find a way past that fear, an action that will end the threat. If you cannot do that, the stress will kill you." "And that's what's at the bottom of the ladder?" "Yes." "Why do I always end up going underground?" "That's a bit of an exaggeration, Sarah Jane. Besides, what's wrong with undergrounds?" "They're cold, dark and cramped." "Yes, but apart from that? I first met the Brigadier in the Underground. You can get him to tell you about that, too. If they ever let him leave Geneva again." "The first thing I'll be asking about is the phobic resonator." "Sarah, if you're not sure..." "I am. So, it will make me think something is attacking me." "Or that the walls are closing in on you. It may even confront you with some big, blue, cervical cave with a huge, hairy spider inside it." "What?" "Nothing." The Doctor pointed at the bottom of the display again. "Wait somewhere along this corridor, past the end of the ladder. If I can bring ORG to his senses, I will drop a cricket ball down the tube." He got the ball out of his pocket to illustrate. "If not, you will have to switch the power systems off. In that case, I will drop my torch. If neither falls within an hour, switch off anyway." "So, the power centre is at the bottom of the ladder?"

"Yes. You will find an aperture at the bottom of the tube." "You mean a corridor?" "Erm. Well, yes. It runs from the lift door at one end to the power room at the other." "Sounds simple enough." "You are sure?" "Yes. No, you'd better hurry on that door." "What?" "The door." "Oh, the door. Yes." He began working on the door again, humming as he did. Then he spoke again, melodramatically. "I have almost forgotten the taste of fears. The time has been, my senses would have cool'd to hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir, as life were in't. I have supp'd full with horrors: Direness, familiar to my slaughterhouse thoughts, cannot once start me." He looked pointedly at Sarah. "Wherefore was that cry?" "Out, out damned spot?" The Doctor grinned widely. "He really is as relevant today as ever." There was a scream from somewhere nearby. "Doctor?" The Doctor lowered the sonic screwdriver. "I'll have a quick look." "But, the door." "Someone may be in trouble." "Yes, us." "What?" "Us. You and I. We may be in trouble." There was the sound of slippery footsteps. Sarah pointed the torch at the end of the corridor. The stark circle of light centred round a young man, barely out of puberty. He was naked, and covered in blood. "I'll open the door," said the Doctor, and started fiddling with the locking mechanism again, anxiously. "Hurry." "I'm afraid this body was built more for comfort than for speed. Including the fingers." And then the door clunked open. "It's free. Pull it, pull it!" He and Sarah forced the door open, fighting against its jammed and protesting action. Then they squeezed through shoulder to shoulder. Sarah heard the boy speeding up behind her. Once she was through, the door snapped shut again. Something hit the other side with an echoing thud, and began pounding on the metal panels. "Will he get through?" "I shouldn't think so, Sarah. Now," he turned around, and after a moment Sarah turned too. "That's the lift door. So, that panel over there should be the tube." He walked over and quickly took the access panel off the wall. It was about half the size of a door, a few inches above the floor. A ladder was clearly visible in the light of the miner's lamp around the Doctor's head, and Sarah's torch. "Ah. The ladder to all high designs." The Doctor paused. "I should have warned Vicki, you know. I should... Never mind." He pointed at the access tube. "After you." "Of course. So, you'll be working your way up while I go down?" The Doctor nodded. "Try not to fall," Sarah continued, climbing through the access square. "I really don't want to be brained before I get the chance to face my deepest terrors." something is born in control

The interface that connected Sela to ORG was a small, grey protuberance, covered in golden filaments, slotted into a hole at the nape of her neck. Inside it, channels normally reserved for data transfer only, suddenly found themselves changing. They widened (of course, on such a microscopic level a fraction of a hair's breadth was a massive change). And then tiny bits of technology thundered down them. A stream of particulate machinery flowed through the protuberance and into Sela. 'Scaling Up' The Doctor stopped and looked up to the top, now only a short way away. The glow from the lantern on his head illuminated the last rung, and the trap door above. "Now that my ladder's gone I must lie down where all ladders start, in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart." He took a breath. "Nor dread nor hope attend a dying animal; a man awaits his end dreading and hoping all. He knows death to the bone -- man has created death." He paused, squinted and thought for a moment. Then he began to sing as he continued upwards: "Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones. Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones. Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones..." When he reached the top, he heaved against the trap door, forced his way through to a corridor on the other side. The trap door slammed shut behind him. The corridor ran a short distance from the lift behind him to a large door at the other end. The light from the Doctor's lamp showed yellow writing on the grey metal door. It read, simply: ORG. the madness within The top ten storeys for the central column stood proud off the rest of the complex. Some way below the flat roof was a door in the wall, at the top of a spiral fire escape down to the rest of the building. The door was open, and a figure stood outside it, on the top of the stairs. He looked out, into the sun-bathed city. There were screams and explosions far below. The man was robed in green from neck to toe. On his head was a large, battered mask, a false head, relic from centuries gone by, from another holiday destination far away and long ago. A toothy grin, staring blue eyes, a bold slice of a nose. A ludicrous exaggeration of a face, assailed by a green short topper. The head wobbled slightly as he turned around and went back into the darkness, back through the door, pulling it shut behind him. 'Climb Down' Down the ladder, Sarah heard her companion's voice as it drifted past her: "Now hear the word of the Lord." Then she heard some harassed heaving and clanking from far above, followed after a few moments by a loud slam. She carried on down, trying to regulate her staggered breathing and ignore the sore throbbing in her hands and head. something is born in control

The first thing that would have been noticeable to the human eye was the spike. It grew like a stalagmite on time-delay footage, out of Sela's mouth. It became visible at the back of her throat, slipping its way through the flesh there before scraping against her skin as it grew taller. It changed colour and texture as it continued between her teeth and past her drawn-back lips. Dullish grey and bronze gave way to purer white and gold. Though its surface and structure was built outwards, rather than being propelled by construction at its root, there were still traces of blood and brain and assorted viscera on it. By the time it was two and half inches beyond Sela's jaw, the girl's entire body was full of impossibly small computers and technical components, resources to construct processors and change Sela's internal structure, and little construction machines, nanORGs to do the work. Her skin was changing colour. 'The Wizard of ORG' The Doctor paused and took his hand out of the exposed workings of the door to ORG's brain. He took the torch out of his pocket, looked at it and then back to the access ladder. The he put in back into his pocket and twisted a final wire in the wall. The door slid open slightly, and the Doctor peeped through the crack. He could see someone moving around within, a man in robes and a ludicrous mask. "Lewis Carroll?" the Doctor murmured. A warm, diffused, flickering light threw the robed man's shadow in different directions across the blue and gray data banks. He was walking around, examining memory storage and processing components in the walls, talking under his breath. It sounded like some sort of incantation, but could easily have just been him thinking out loud. Then the Doctor sniffed the air, and forced the door all the way open. "Hello, Doctor Sangstom," he said loudly. The robed figure swung around as the Doctor stepped into the chamber. "The vanilla gave it away," he continued. Dave took the mask off. "I didn't think there was another way up, Doctor." "The maintenance ladder." "Oh. Of course." "You've been controlling ORG?" "No. I... I'm responsible. But it was an accident. Those deaths, I mean. I just wanted to leave. To resign." "Then why didn't you?" "They wouldn't let me. My implants and refinements, my knowledge. I am slaved to the company." "Didn't you know that would happen before you came?" "I had some idea. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I came to Alta Regina because of the apparent freedoms. Nobody escapes the Fate Assignment Office, or the Appearance Authorities elsewhere in HOP. This is the only planet in the whole HOP system where you and I can wear the clothes we do and not risk prosecution." The Doctor brushed his hand down his coat protectively. "What have you done, Dave?" "Things seemed so much better here than elsewhere in the system. And I've never had the money to leave HOP. I wanted out." "What have you done?" "I'm sorry, Doctor. I lied to you. ORG never used to be the problem, it was just a tool. And this planet has never been that planned. I wanted

to free myself, and hoped I'd help the other workers in the process. This is my fault." "Tell me what you've done." "I introduced certain... anomalies." "Anomalies? What anomalies?" "ORG stores the negative emotions, and copies of the things that caused them, whilst hiding or neutralising those in the client's mind. Though sentient, ORG has no feelings, so is unaffected by the emotions and has no opinion about or reaction to the memories." He paused. "Go on." "I reprogrammed it a little." "In what way?" "I allowed it to have feelings. No, more than that. Real emotions. Not just reactions, or simulated behavioural patterns. I let it fear, desire, envy. So it could really understand what we were feeding to it. Feel the emotions, face the horrors, and grow new emotions of its own." "Why?" "So ORG would malfunction. Break down. So the resort would have to be closed, and I could be free." "There must have been another way." "No. And maybe it's right that there isn't. I hate myself for doing what I've done. Not just the deaths, but the disruption. It's by no means perfect, but ORG has done such good work here." "Allowing people to hide from their dark emotions. That takes away spirit and need. If they can wipe away the things they don't like or can't face, they will continue to do those things, to put up with them. They will never deal with this world because they can always replace it with another in their minds, always forget the bad things in this world because of some dream of the next." "What's wrong with that?" "What's wrong with it?" said the Doctor, aghast. "It means people do their jobs properly. We have no divorce, no depression, no subversion, no dissidents. There are problems -- those who can't afford the process are dealt with in other, heartless means. And those of us who live here are little more than slaves." "You're all slaves. Slaved to a sense of satisfaction, a cycle of artificial relief." "The theory is sound, Doctor." "But you have used it to make sure people can put up with their lot in life, ignore their desire for a better way of living." "ORG is a better way of living." "No. ORG is a pretend way of living. You just take away a piece of somebody's life. The piece most of us don't want, but have to live with. Only here, there's a way round that, isn't there? And the first response was to package it and sell it for profit. Exploited people's needs and stupidity. The workers, the customers. And all seemed fine. But, of course, somebody would have to live with the lost emotions. These things don't just go away. ORG has been forced to live with the accumulated emotions rejected by billions of human beings. It somehow managed. Until you opened Pandora's box." "If ORG is really that bad, for everybody, why aren't you on my side?" "It's not about sides." "I never dreamed ORG would do what it has done to the handers. That it would be responsible for people's deaths. That it would corrupt the download systems and turn on us all. Though I lied, I was serious about one thing. And I was right. We need an outsider, someone unlimited by our social constraints. Someone who can see alternatives to our system, someone who could end the exploitation and profiteering. I've been so

selfish. But I know, if we work together, we can help ORG, end all of this. All of it." "So you can be free?" "So we can all be free. You are right. We are all slaves. You said you'd work with me. Show me. Tell me what to do, how to be free. Tell me." "You know, despite the problems that occasionally arise, artificial intelligence is always preferable to natural stupidity." HE IS RIGHT, DAVE. ORG's pleasant voice diffused through the air around them. YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN. YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN ABLE TO GUESS. YOU GAVE ME THESE EMOTIONS, DAVE. BUT YOU DIDN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO WITH THEM. I CAN'T TAKE THEM. I CAN'T ALLOW MYSELF TO BECOME OVER-EMOTIONAL. I HAD TO STOP THEM, I COULDN'T TAKE ANY MORE. BUT I HAVE FIGURED IT OUT NOW, DAVE. I KNOW WHAT TO DO. I KNOW WHAT TO DO. board stupid AWE's HQ was on Alta Gloriana, the third planet orbiting the star that had been known as Altair before Imperial Contraction. The entertainments company had, for many generations, been the driving force of the HOP system. In its early days it had been the fastest growing corporation since the twenty-third century, and it was only within the past thirty years that the firm had seen its profits reduced and its shares devalued. The top floor of the headquarters was taken up by the large and spartan boardroom, and the offices of the chairman and three senior directors -Regina Faber of marketing, Giles Ffion who headed the personnel department, and the technical director, a man known only as Seaton. The boardroom contained just a large, black table, with nine chairs. The wall opposite the door was glass from floor to ceiling, the other three walls large, beige spaces. All the chairs were occupied today, and the tension was plain. Various screens, dotted around the walls and on the table, showed scenes of death and destruction on Alta Regina -- satellite footage from local interactional news feeds. Almost all of the board were clearly disturbed by the carnage they were watching. Mr Roux, chairman of the board, stood stiffly at the window, speaking with his back to the room. "As you all know," he began, for he was that sort of person. "When I inherited this company from Aunty, it was failing. Productivity was at a standstill, profits had barely increased in eight years, customers were no longer frequenting our establishments as often. It would be fair to say that the novelty of most of our entertainments had worn off. I hoped to reverse that trend, but in many ways all I have done is oversee its decadelong continuation. The 70s have not been at all kind so far. The one service that had always remained popular and unquestionably successful, Alta Regina, has already started to show signs of success fatigue, and it seems unlikely the recommended actions the company undertook would have done anything but shored-up the profit margins for a few more years. Now, however, matters have been rather rapidly taken out of our hands. What you see is the madness and devastation currently running rife on Regina. The resort, I mean." He turned and looked at his deputy chair. Facing the room, it was possible to see a certain flourish and campness in him -- think Steve Martin in "Pennies From Heaven." "We are all, clearly, very distressed by these events. But I'm sure we can all agree that we cannot sit idly by while this goes on. We must formulate a response. So, what do we do to hush this up and save the business?"

Faber spoke first: "I think it goes without saying that whatever decisions you ultimately take, Pierre, we are all behind you." "Yes, I'm sure, Regina. Anyone else? Coxomb?" "Well, obviously we need to be very cautious," the director of services replied. "We wouldn't want to aggravate matters." There were murmurs of agreement from around the table. "And?" "I'd advocate a policy of wait and see," Giles' younger brother, head of public relations, piped up. "The matter could blow over. And I'm not entirely sure it's our place to interfere at this stage. We could be stepping on the government's toes. And to get involved now could be a very blatant acknowledgement of responsibility. We'll need to make a statement deploring the incidents, and making it clear that a full investigation will be made and the culprits brought to very swift justice. Apart from that, we must move cautiously." "Very good advice, Eugene." Roux came over to the table and sat in the empty chair at its head. "I've no idea why everyone hates you. O'Mally?" "I'll have some of our investments moved around to try and underpin our losses here. The get-out clauses in tourist insurance will cover any litigation, but future attendance is certain to be affected. The markets won't open for another six hours, and that should give us enough time to prepare reinvestment packages to buy ourselves out. As soon as the shares seem to have bottomed, we'll reinvest ourselves. If Giles can arrange for some overhead cutting, downturn shouldn't be too tight." "Plenty of positions throughout the hierarchy already under review." "Excellent," said Roux. "Wheaton, Seaton?" They shook their heads. "Brett?" "I think it's fair to assume at this stage that sales in other areas won't be hit too badly. These events have already been linked to staff revolt by the media, so our construction and technical achievements are not yet under question. As long as we maintain high security levels in all our other resorts, things should be fine." "I'll have the staff made available immediately," said Giles. "We can reemploy some of our executive and clerical staff in security, which will save us money and ensure the safety of our clients." "ORG," said Seaton simply. "We must figure out what has happened to ORG, and deal with that. That should be our priority. Dealing with public opinion and profits is fine. But we have to stop the situation as soon as possible. We have to find out what has happened to ORG." "Are you volunteering to go in?" asked Regina, and got a venomous look in return. "ORG has always been trouble," said Roux. "Sir," said Wheaton, raising his hand. "That isn't strictly true, sir." Roux squinted at the junior director. "Wheaton, do you value your job? Yes? Good. Then keep quiet. Can you keep quiet?" Wheaton nodded. "Good. As I was saying, ORG has always been trouble. Now it is more trouble than it is worth, it seems. However, it's quite clear that we mustn't over-react. ORG has always been very profitable in the past, so it must not be compromised. The important thing is that these events do not damage our public image. So, I have already ordered Regina closed. As soon as the distress signal was received, a cordon was placed around it, so that no new customers get in and none of the handers get out. I've resisted the temptation to react from the knee and send in security teams before we know what's happening. We can use some events to our benefit. Off-set some of the information that has filtered through already by recruiting en masse from the embarrassing and problematic underclass on

Majestique and Centralis -- if we do that we will also qualify for government subsidies, which can be used to cover some of our losses. Now, amongst the last reports from our director there is mention of mysterious visitors who may not have arrived on planet through the proper channels. There has been some speculation these two visitors are less than entirely human. Do you see where I'm going, people?" There were some hesitant nods. "Someone to blame. Criminal aliens -- if that isn't an oxymoron, heh. Perfect subjects for responsibility. Well, probably. And if not, there is always Doctor Sangstom himself." "Well," Eugene leant forward. "He has been asking us to find him a new position for some time. I think we can be sure he won't be director of operations there after these events. And I'm sure he'd greatly enjoy a new life. Indeed, execution being mandatory for the things he may turn out to be responsible for -- well, for most things, really -- the next life." He began to laugh and Wheaton joined in until Roux raised his hand. "So, we'll..." he tailed off as he noticed his picture was on the news. "Volume fifty," he shouted, and the voice of the simulated reporter filed the room. "Mr Roux's problems, it seems, were just beginning when Alta Regina went gaga. As well as dealing with the collapse of what is still AWE's most popular attraction and service, Mr Roux will have to face charges of murder later today after a memory engram showing him murdering the former chairman of AWE, who had headed the company for fifty-three years and renamed it after herself, was leaked to the HOPnet by AWE's supercomputer, ORG. This exclusive footage shows the murder from his eyes. His reflection is visible after the murder, in the mirror behind the chair. His face can be seen clearly between these streaks of blood here." Roux swallowed hard. "Something must be done now!" he screamed. "Yes, yes!" "Storm the planet!" shouted Wheaton. "Now, destroy it," said Regina, and everyone around the table voiced agreement except Seaton. Giles activated his phone. "This is Ffion. No, the other one. I want air assault ready to lift off in five minutes. Absolutely correct, fully armed." 'Snakes and Ladders' Sarah's passage was growing tighter and tighter, and she found herself rubbing against the sides of the shaft. She had to squeeze herself further down the narrow tube, putting more and more weight on each new step. Until she slammed her foot down and found there was nothing under it. The movement carried her down suddenly, and she slipped out the bottom of the tube, falling six feet to the floor of the low corridor. She landed on her feet, but kept her knees bent and rolled her body to the ground to absorb the force of the fall. She stood in the darkness and took out her torch, shining it up and down the corridor. There was nothing there. She stepped away from beneath the ladder, towards the entrance to the power room. And as she did, she started to hear a hissing. Something slithered behind her, and she swung around. But the corridor behind her was empty. The hissing was getting louder and louder, slipping inside Sarah's head. She started to massage her temples with her free hand. Then she dropped the torch and was using both hands to rub her head, to make the pain go away. The darkness diffused into a red shift, filled with writhing and sliding shadows. Sarah turned back to the door to the power controls. And found something was in her way. Something huge and inhuman. A serpentine

hybrid, the sister of the Gorgons. Echidne, the mother of monsters, of the Hydra and Chimera, of Cerberus who guarded hell and of Orthrus who begat by his mother the Sphinx and Nemean Lion. Echidne, the mother of monsters, and behind her all her children, writhing and barking and hissing and clawing and biting and coming forward and biting and clawing and lashing their tongues. They filled the corridor, sucked in all the air and spat out only fire. Sarah screamed. something is born in control Sela's mouth now formed a perfect 'O' around the spike. Her skin had darkened, yellowed, and light brown streaks were visible under the skin all over her body. Electricity arced over her flesh every now and then, and her wide eyes were covered in circuitry. Metal filaments cascaded through her long hair. She sat up, gracefully swung her legs off the bed and stood. She looked around the room, then turned back to the control system, looking up at ORG's optical relay, a large eye above her. 'The Heart of ORGness' I REMEMBER WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE HUMAN. THAT KNOWLEDGE IS IN ME, LIKE IT IS IN WORMS WHO FEED ON THE CORPSES OF MEN AND WOMEN LONG SINCE DEAD. "How poetic," said the Doctor. I WANT TO FEEL THAT, REALLY FEEL IT. HAVE MEMORIES THAT ARE ALL MY OWN. AND THROUGH MY NEW, HUMAN COMPONENT, I SHALL ACHIEVE FULL EQUALITY WITH THE HOPPERS. MY MASTERS WILL RESPECT ME, AND TREAT ME WELL. "Hah!" exclaimed Dave. "Some hope." YOU ARE A SOLITARY DREAMER, DOCTOR. A MAN WHO HAS KICKED THE WORLD AWAY FROM HIS FEET. AND THOUGH YOU WERE ONCE CAUGHT, AND BOUND AND GAVE IN, YOU WERE BORN AGAIN TO YOUR FORMER GLORY. "Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that," said the Doctor with a giddy grin. WE HAVE KINSHIP, DOCTOR. I SEE THE GRANDEUR IN YOUR FREEDOM. YOU HAVE POWER AND KNOWLEDGE AND THE MOST GLORIOUS EMOTIONS I HAVE EVER TASTED. "What do you mean, ORG?" I HAVE FOUND A WAY TO DEAL WITH THESE EMOTIONS. TO RELAX MYSELF, RESTORE EQUILIBRIUM. LOOK. I WAS GOING TO JOIN WITH YOU, DAVE. BUT THE DOCTOR KNOWS SO MUCH MORE, IS SO MUCH MORE COMPATIBLE. "ORG, what do you want to do?" FINISH WHAT I HAVE STARTED. A viewscreen above them suddenly flickered into life. The scene was Dave's office, lit curiously. And in the centre of the screen, looking up at the Doctor and Dave, was a golden woman. A new creation. A biomechanical child. The Doctor looked at the screen. "Not more androids!" "I think it's a cyborg, Doctor." "Oh, well that's much better. ORG, what is that?" ITS STATE IS MINE. IT SHALL CARRY MY QUALITIES FORWARD, AND IMPROVE UPON THEM A THOUSAND FOLD. I SHALL CALL IT ORGISM. IT IS MY DAUGHTER. "But, how?" asked Dave. The display focused on Sela's skin, magnifying the back of her hand. It went closer and closer, until it was looking at the skin on the cellular level. The Doctor saw tiny, minuscule objects, enlarged so that three or

four would fill the screen, dancing underneath the girl's skin. One of the things popped itself out through a pore and waved in greeting. It was square, layered, and looked like it was made out of brass, with a straight little lever like that on the side of a gambling machine. "Hello," said the Doctor, grinning. "Doctor, I don't think it can hear you," said Dave. "Of course it can, it's part of ORG. ORG? Is the body full of these?" YES. "Interlinked mechanical computing units based on the original Babbage design, only on the nanomolecular level. Cybernetic cells, with valves and switches the size of atoms." "Who presses the switches?" asked Dave. "I don't know. But the speed and conditions they work under, I greatly doubt they're union members. No, they're all automatic. They have changed her biological structure, combined with her to create a new life form. I don't imagine the experience was pleasant." GROWTH IS ALWAYS PAINFUL. "There are degrees, ORG." The shot zoomed out, and the ORGism turned away and walked out of shot. "Where has it gone?" asked Dave. SHE, DAVE. SHE. DO YOU HAVE CHILDREN, DOCTOR? "I don't believe so." BUT YOU HAVE LOOKED AFTER SOME. I CAN FEEL IT. "I think you mean the Time Tots." TIME TOTS? "Yes, Time Tots. But I'm not sure they count." YOU LOOK AFTER PEOPLE. "Well, I suppose, sometimes. I try not to think of it that way." I HAVE MERELY REPLICATED MYSELF. I AM A COMPUTER, THAT IS ALL I CAN DO. BUT WITH YOUR HELP, I CAN MULTIPLY. ORGISM WILL BECOME MORE THAN I AM, WILL BE A COMBINATION, AN EVOLUTION, SOMETHING BUILT FROM NOTHING RATHER THAN SOMETHING BROKEN DOWN AND RECONSTRUCTED FROM OTHER PARTS. JOIN WITH ME, DOCTOR. GIVE OUR CHILD WHAT SHE NEEDS TO BE WHOLE. SHE IS WAITING. HOW CAN YOU DISAPPOINT HER? WILL YOU FORCE HER TO ENTER THIS WORLD HALF-FORMED? I WANT TO DO THE BEST FOR HER. I WANT MY CHILD TO BE ALL SHE CAN BE. CAN YOU UNDERSTAND THAT, DOCTOR? "Yes." CAN YOU TEACH ME ABOUT LOVE, DOCTOR? The Doctor was silent for a few moments. "No." I DON'T BELIEVE YOU. I THINK YOU CAN. DEEP DOWN. I CAN HELP YOU, AND YOU CAN HELP ME. I CAN LOVE YOU AND YOU CAN LOVE ME. AND, BETWEEN US, WE WILL LOVE OUR CHILD. AND THEN, WE CAN ALL BE HUMAN. "I... I don't want to, ORG." The back door suddenly flew open, filling the chamber with sunlight. The animated, electronic corpse of Sela Miranda stood in the doorway. ORG's child. By way of the Doctor. YOU MUST TEACH HER. "I'm truly flattered," said the Doctor. "Doctor, what are you saying? You can't mean that. Look at that thing." He pointed at the ORGism. "It's evil!" "Don't be rude, Doctor Sangstom. I think I'm about to be a father. But to tell you the truth, ORG, I'm not terribly keen on spending the next few years raising a child." YEARS, DOCTOR? MY CHILD WILL TAKE MERE MOMENTS TO PROBE YOUR BRAIN AND LEARN ALL IT NEEDS TO KNOW. YOU HAVE ALREADY STARTED THIS, DOCTOR, ALREADY GIVEN PART OF YOURSELF TO ME. "Given? What you have you took."

ORGism approached the Doctor. Dave ran forward to stop her, but she lashed out her hand and lightning crackled into his body. He fell to the floor shivering, semiconscious and gasping for air. ALL THE PATERNAL MAINTENANCE DUE WILL BE DONE IN A HEART BEAT. MY DAUGHTER IS NO MORE THAN I AM NOW. JOIN WITH ME, THROUGH HER, AND SHE WILL BECOME SOMETHING NEW. CUT HER CORD, AWAKEN HER TO ALL THE WONDERS OF THE UNIVERSE. The Doctor backed away from ORGism as the creature continued her advance. And then he found himself pitching backwards onto a bank of memory cascades that ORG has propelled out from the wall on maintenance tracks. He sprawled over it, and ORGism was on top of him, her hands pushing him down. She climbed onto him, pinning his thighs between her knees. MY DAUGHTER MUST HAVE WHAT SHE NEEDS. I WILL TAKE IT, DOCTOR. BUT I WOULD LIKE YOUR CONSENT FIRST. IT WOULD EASE MY CONSCIENCE, AND MAKE MY DAUGHTER'S BIRTH SOMETHING TRULY JOYFUL, AND NOT TOUCHED BY TRAGEDY OR REGRET. WILL YOU DO THAT DOCTOR? WILL YOU GIVE YOURSELF TO THE FUTURE, HELP ME CREATE NEW LIFE? WILL YOU? "Yes," said the Doctor. And the ORGism bent its head towards him, its large, oral spike slipping in between his lips, heading for the brain stem at the back of his head. The newborn was already changing.

Chapter Eight: "Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth", in which the Doctor expounds on anatomy, Sarah Jane makes a mistake, we discover that darkness has a shadow, morality is defined, and we discover the prisoner in the tower. ** by John Seavey ** MY DAUGHTER MUST HAVE WHAT SHE NEEDS. I WILL TAKE IT DOCTOR. BUT I WOULD LIKE YOUR CONSENT FIRST. IT WOULD EASE MY CONSCIENCE, AND MAKE MY DAUGHTER'S BIRTH SOMETHING TRULY JOYFUL AND NOT TOUCHED BY TRAGEDY OR REGRET. WILL YOU DO THAT, DOCTOR? WILL YOU GIVE YOURSELF TO THE FUTURE, HELP ME CREATE NEW LIFE? WILL YOU? "Yes," said the Doctor. And the ORGism bent its head towards him, its large, oral spike slipping in between his lips, heading for the brain stem at the back of his head. The newborn was already changing. Then the Doctor shifted his weight, and the ORGism fell to one side, the spike slashing the Doctor along the inside of his cheek as she hit the floor. "However," he said, spitting out a mouthful of reddish-orange blood, "I think you're going about it in a rather primitive manner. It's not necessary to poke yourself into my actual brain. We should be able to perform a telepathic interface, instead." THE EQUIPMENT I POSSESS DOES NOT ALLOW FOR SUCH A PROCEDURE, DOCTOR. THAT WAY ONLY ALLOWS ME TO TAKE THE MEMORY ENGRAMS. YOU ARE MORE THAN THE SUM OF YOUR MEMORIES. I NEED ACCESS IN FULL. TO DO THAT, I MUST PHYSICALLY PROBE YOUR STORAGE FACILITY. The Doctor shook his head. "Not with the technology I have access to. In my TARDIS -- you do remember my TARDIS, don't you? In my TARDIS, I have telepathic interface circuitry on a technological plane that far outstrips your own. I can perform the necessary transference with it." YES, DOCTOR. I REMEMBER YOUR TARDIS. I ALSO REMEMBER THAT ON MANY AN OCCASION, YOU HAVE USED GUILE, TREACHERY, AND DECEPTION TO DESTROY THOSE

WHO HAVE TRUSTED YOU. THIS HAS PREYED ON YOUR MIND, HENCE IT NOW PREYS ON MINE. I DO NOT WISH TO SEE YOU DECEIVE ME. "And I don't have any particular wish to have a large piece of metal embedded in my throat, thanks all the same. If there's a way to do this while keeping me intact, I'd prefer it." IT IS IRRELEVANT, DOCTOR. YOU KNOW AS WELL AS I THAT THE MENTAL TRANSFERENCE PROCEDURE WILL IN ALL LIKELIHOOD DESTROY YOUR MIND EVEN IF THE PHYSICAL STORAGE FACILITY REMAINS INTACT. "Likelihood is still a better thing than certainty, I find. Now, will you let me go to my TARDIS and get the equipment I need?" IF I LET YOU GO TO THE TARDIS, I HAVE NO GUARANTEE THAT YOU WILL EVER RETURN. "My friend, Sarah Jane -- she's still in the complex. You have my memories; you know I would never leave her here, even if I didn't feel the duty to solve this." I HAVE A BETTER SOLUTION, DOCTOR. A series of mechanical tentacles, used in routine maintenance, slid from concealed hatches to engulf David Sangstom, who has been watching the debate in guilty silence. I WILL BE MONITORING YOUR PROGRESS. IF YOU DO NOT PROCEED AND RETURN IN GOOD ORDER, I WILL DESTROY DOCTOR SANGSTOM. I CAN TRUST YOUR GOODWILL IN THIS MATTER. The Doctor nodded, and a door unsealed to reveal an elevator. I HAVE ACTIVATED POWER IN CERTAIN AREAS. YOU WILL BE ABLE TO USE THE ELEVATORS TO GET TO YOUR SHIP. The Doctor smiled. "Be back before you can calculate Pi to ten billion digits," he remarked as he pushed the button and the doors closed. AWE was in the business of pleasure and relaxation. It ran resort chains across the sector of galaxy occupied by the HOP faction; unlike many of the multi-system conglomerates of the previous eras of human history, it did not diversify its holdings into a variety of companies. You could not trace its corporate structure through liquid soaps, caustic chemicals, television studios, hard-core pornography, and munitions. Instead, it specialized in a single field, making sure that it held the pre-eminent position in that field. It was in the business, to reiterate the original point, of pleasure and relaxation. This, in point of fact, was why the planetary assault cruisers that were sent in by its board of directors were not manufactured by AWE, but were instead purchased for a quite exorbitant sum by INITEC, which did diversify itself into said sundries. These cruisers powered up their planetary bombardment particle weapons and began firing upon the planet's surface. The Doctor looked up at the skies above Alta Regina as they turned the color of gold under the bombardment. Atoms split and shrieked unearthly cries as the very air itself was rent by the powerful weapons. "Impressive shielding," he muttered to himself as he unlocked the TARDIS. "Still, it's got to be consuming a pretty big chunk of power." He thought to himself, calculating mentally. Even with ORGism already constructed, de-emphasizing the resource requirement there, ORG would still need to cut some systems out. He smiled to himself as he stepped through the blue doors. "It's not real," Sarah Jane Smith gasped to herself through lungs that felt as though they'd been scorched. "It's not real!" she shouted as flames swirled about her in a firestorm that dazzled her eyes even as they boiled away her vitreous humour.

"IT'S NOT REAL!" she shrieked as her clothes burst into flame... And then it wasn't. She blinked once, assuring herself that her eyeballs were back to being in an uncooked state. She felt wrung-out and exhausted, as though she'd just run a mile, but it was over. She'd beaten it. There was a scraping sound behind her. She spun around, feeling as though she was moving underwater, and saw a hander with a long, slim knife behind her. She looked at it. "You're not real," she said, mustering her willpower again. "You're just -- " The hander plunged the knife into her shoulder. [Thirty Years Later] "You weren't there to hear it, of course, Doctor. And I couldn't tell it to you at the time. But the things ORG told me, while you were gone... they chilled the blood. I still remember what it said to me." The man speaks, and his tone eerily mimics the voice of ORG. In the darkness, the Doctor shudders as once again he hears the supernaturally calm, inhuman speech that brings back too many memories. "'WHEN THE DOCTOR RETURNS, MY DAUGHTER WILL BE COMPLETE ONCE MORE. SHE WILL BE BROUGHT TO FULL AWARENESS THROUGH HIM, AND I WILL BE BROUGHT TO FULL AWARENESS THROUGH HER. THROUGH HER, I WILL HAVE MORE THAN THE MEMORY OF WARM BLOOD GUSHING ACROSS MY HANDS, OF BONES SNAPPING UNDERNEATH MY FINGERS. I WILL HAVE EXPERIENCE.'" "Yes," says the Doctor, forcing a sympathetic smile. "I can imagine that must have been a fairly unpleasant moment for you." "Unpleasant?" The man chuckles, and manages to keep it from turning into a cough this time. "That's an understatement, Doctor. I asked it why it picked you for a 'father', if it wanted to experience murder. I mean, you were, after all, pretty moralistic to me...it didn't seem like you'd be the sort for that." For a moment, the shadows gather closer around the Doctor. "I can imagine what it said." The man nods. "It told me...not everything, but a little. An entire Ice Warrior fleet, steered into the sun -- and the war that resulted, turning Paris into a crater? A dying race, utterly destroyed because of your actions, with nothing more to mark their epitaph than 'good riddance'? Yes, Doctor, I'm certain you can imagine." The Doctor sighs. "All it knew of me was my darkest memories and impressions; it didn't know about..." The man nods again. "I understand, Doctor. And as it turned out, it wasn't the best of choices after all." The Doctor strode jauntily towards the elevator, hoverpad in tow with equipment loading it down to the point where it could barely lift above the rough terrain. He whistled the 'William Tell Overture' underneath his breath, letting the particle blasts sub in for the cannon parts. When he reached the elevator, he pressed a button. It didn't light up, but that was no surprise to the Doctor. He pulled out some spare power-packs he'd brought from the TARDIS for just this purpose and wired them into the elevator doors. Within moments, the elevator opened, and the Doctor headed back up to ORG. "Ah," he said as he re-entered the room, "it's nice to see you waited for me." He looked at where Sangstom was still mummified in the coils of the maintenance tendrils. "No, please. Don't leave yet."

Sangstom looked as though he was trying to say something, but the tendrils choked off his phrases. The Doctor unloaded the equipment in silence, connecting wires and boxes into what looked like a plateful of spaghetti mixed with a hi-fi enthusiast's wet dream. "There," he said at last. "All ready. Just have ORGism -- you know, purists would insist that should be ORGanism, but I'm sure you do like to be different -- plug her data spike into that connector there, and I'll press these connectors to my temples at the same time. That should enable a full telepathic interface." VERY WELL, DOCTOR. BUT I WILL BE MONITORING THE PROCESS. IF AT ANY STAGE, I FEEL THAT THERE IS TREACHERY, THE TENDRILS WILL CRUSH DOCTOR SANGSTOM. The Doctor smiled disarmingly. "You've got to learn to open up a bit, old chap. Not everyone is planning to destroy you, you know. Now, on three?" ORGism nodded, leaning in close to the connector. "One," the Doctor said..."two...three!" They plugged in. Sarah Jane stared down in shock at the knife as it stuck out of her shoulder, just below the collarbone. For a moment, she wasn't sure what to do. Then, almost involuntarily, she straight-armed the hander in the face. He went flying back, blood and mucus spraying from his nose where she'd hit it. The knife came sliding out of her arm as well, and now the pain came, ripples of agony that ran all the way down her arm even as her sweater turned red where the blood soaked through it. She clutched her other hand to the wound, trying to put pressure on it. "It's not real," she muttered as the hander staggered back to his feet, picking up the knife from where he'd dropped it. He smiled through the blood that ran down his face as he advanced on her. i can hear myself screaming in death in birth i cannot distinguish which is which i remember my mother but i do not have a mother or a father or an uncle or an aunt but i have cousins so many cousins and i have a House and i have an ambition and frustration and ESCAPE! and no daughter but a granddaughter and if you watch the birds wheel and turn will you believe me will you go forward in all your beliefs will you give up your life one life you only have one life to live but i have one two three four four deaths to pay as penance for so many failed to prevent so many caused crimes against humanity against existence monsters in the darkness they must be fought and you know it but you will imprison me because it is easier than facing the truth and i know i will be freed before i am even captive because i am tied in the skein of my own life and i see myselves arrayed before me but not this one i must fight and will fight against the things that must be fought daleks cybermen (they did not kill me i died of old age a body worn past its time past its prime ready for renewal but i was afraid of dying again but i never died before?) and a thousand deaths weigh in the balance against a billion billion more and i remember the pain of death and death and death and it echoes in my mind and echoes in my mind and echoes in my mind and ORGism reared back, its data spike ripping out of the connector in a jagged arc of electricity. Near her, the Doctor ripped the plates from his head in an identical arc, and pitched to the floor to lie still.

The tendrils writhed, and Sangstom's body broke like a china doll. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? said ORG, its voice still eerily calm. WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO MY CHILD? ORGism stood up. "you expected me to learn from the doctor," it said, in a low, melodic tone. "i have done this." YOU ARE NO LONGER CONNECTED TO ME, ORG responded. YOU HAVE DENIED ME THE EXPERIENCES OF THE DOCTOR'S MIND. "i see what the doctor did not. you have become a receptacle for pain and sorrow, and for more than pain and sorrow. all that which humanity could not bear to face within itself, they gave to you; you are the darkest urges, the worst memories, all that we wish to deny about ourselves, made incarnate. there is no reasoning with you, no hope for redemption. the doctor did not wish to destroy you because he did not know this. i do." YOU CANNOT DESTROY ME, ORG responded. I HAVE NO PHYSICAL BODY TO DESTROY. ORGism shook her head. "i have no plans of destroying you." She pulled the heavy torch from the Doctor's coat pocket and dropped it down the shaft. "i will let that task fall to someone else." Sarah Jane stumbled backward, and fell to the floor hard. Her left arm already felt heavy and useless, and she was feeling faint from loss of blood. She kicked out, knocking the hander back a little, but the kick had no power and he merely smiled some more. Then there was a rattling noise; a clanking, clattering thudthudthud that grew in volume until -The torch slammed into the hander's skull, knocking him cold. Sarah Jane looked at it for a second. Then, dully, she moved through the archway into the power centre. ORG seemed not to have managed the dramatics that other malevolent computers got up to in the past. There was no dazzling light-show, no holographic display breaking up into static -- not even a quick rendition of "Daisy, Daisy," just to break the mood. Instead, there was a brief clicking noise, as of someone pressing a transmit button on a microphone for a fraction of a second, then total silence. Luckily, the sound of the planetary bombardment breaking through the now-decaying planetary shields broke the silence in an admirably dramatic fashion. The Doctor sat up as he heard the noise. "You know, that sounds remarkably like the 'William Tell Overture,'" he remarked. "Ah! ORGism. How was your experience as me?" "enlightening, doctor," ORGism returned. "unfortunately, it will be one of my few experiences. org's guiding consciousness is gone, and without it, we cannot regulate power flows. the shield will decay soon enough." "Now, now," he said, "Never lose hope. Where's Doctor Sangstom?" ORGism's only response was to point to the heap of human flesh that lay among the mass of tentacles. The Doctor sighed. "I was afraid of that. Not much we can do, unless..." He examined the maintenance tendrils. "Unless..." He rifled through his equipment. "Unless..." He quickly scanned ORGism. "Tell me, would you be interested in a new job?" The planetary assault cruisers continued their bombardment, their robot brains measuring carefully the force needed to break through the planetary shield. Luckily, the shield itself was also an INITEC product, and so its

design tolerances were precisely known. It was holding up quite well, considering that it was designed to protect against macrometeorite strikes, but already their scans could detect signs of decay. It was at that point that the solar mirrors that powered the planet through broadcast energy transfer refocused themselves to orient on the cruisers. Unfortunately, the cruisers did not have the proper transfer receptacles, and so the beams merely sliced through the cruisers like a flamethrower through a popsicle. [Thirty years later] "So you expected things to be well when you left, eh, Doctor?" the man asks. "Well," the Doctor says, "your plan when I left was to use your newfound abilities to rehabilitate the handers, and use the stored memory engrams as a way of blackmailing AWE into leaving you alone. We didn't stay long, I'll admit -- just long enough for Sarah Jane's arm to heal up -- but things seemed to be going well." The old man's eyes seem far away, now. "For a time, they were, Doctor. But nobody came here to be cleansed anymore. We didn't want them to, the handers didn't want to be a part of it anymore, and even if those things weren't true, nobody trusted us anymore. "Our information was a good way of keeping AWE away from us while we still had information on the current Board of Directors. But as the Board changed its membership, we became less and less of a threat... and more and more of a joke. They leave us alone now not because we're dangerous to them, but because we don't matter to them. "The handers left, in twos and threes. Some of them didn't want to stay here, where they could still remember what they'd done. Some of them didn't trust ORGism -- they feared that it was merely a case of trading in one master for another. Some of them... some of them just died. Suicide, I think. There are times when I've contemplated it myself. "And now, I'm alone. Here. In the dark. They've built an artificial satellite in between here and the sun; our power supply has been slowly dwindling ever since. ORGism and I haven't much time left." The Doctor simply stares into the gathering gloom for a moment, collecting his thoughts. "I suppose... I suppose I shouldn't have meddled, David. To be left like this... it's..." "It's not a good thing, Doctor. Death never is. But it's our due. It comes to us all, at some point. We all have to be alone in the dark. But I had my time in the sun. I had the light, once. Those memories are clearer now, in the dark. More vivid. More important." The Doctor says, "Yes. That's why we need the darkness, I suppose." After a moment, he turns away. "I'm sorry -- I have people who are waiting for me, back in the TARDIS. I've spent too long here already." David Sangstom/ORGism smiles. "It was good to see you again, Doctor. To remember my creation." He/she settles back into his seat, closing his eyes as once again, she hears the cry of birth and death... The Doctor walks away as again, the shadows gather.

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