MIA #16: The Planet of Relaxation Search:The WebAngelfire

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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 THIRTY-
SIX 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. Hadyn closed it behind the
man, and fell back against it.

"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-fingers-
in-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. "Deep enough, I should think. The rest, I've always
taken as it comes."

Picture the human neck. Thirty centimeters in diameter, perhaps thirty-

five 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 son-
in-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 twenty-
ninth."
"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 decade-
long 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 grand-
daughter 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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