by Doctor Who
‘I get it. They thought he’d go away if they didn’t tell anyone about him.’
‘But it didn’t work. Word spread anyway, and he only got stronger.’
‘So now they can’t ignore him any more.’
‘They’ve brought him out into the open. They’ve made him real.’
‘So they can fight him.’
Domnic stared at Rose, stunned by this simple truth that he hadn’t quite grasped for himself. A fight. Of course that was what this was.
Hadn’t Hal Gryden said as much? He’d said it was time to ‘over-throw this police state. . . dream all the things they won’t let us dream about’.
There were butterflies in Domnic’s stomach. He felt the way he had the first time he saw Static: as if the future was no longer an unchanging road but an exciting and a terrifying place all at once.
There were images crashing into his mind – of freedom, of choices, of 92
adventure. Of anarchy and of blood in the streets. He told himself to resist them. He focused on what was real, what he believed in.
Find Static. Find Hal Gryden. Find the truth.
He hardly noticed when Rose slipped out of the room. ‘Bathroom,’
she explained.
It was only a ghost image at first, but as Domnic finessed the controls, it came suddenly, sharply into focus. Two figures, young men like himself, sitting on a sofa facing the screen. It was clearly Static: the lack of a channel ident said as much, as did the fact that the actors were wearing black balaclavas so as not to be recognised. Domnic knew the programme; it was one of Gryden’s most popular. It belonged to an ancient genre known as the ‘situation comedy’, but it had been brought bang up to date as a subtle but wicked satire on the influence of the media. It was called Viewing Figures.
‘Isn’t it funny,’ commented the figure on the left, ‘how on TV you only see the police when they’re arresting dangerous criminals. You never see them pushing people down the stairs and then shooting them dead because they don’t like the look of their face, and then munching on a doughnut, like we all know they do all the time.’
The remark was greeted by hysterical fake laughter from an unseen audience.
‘I hadn’t noticed that,’ said the second figure. ‘Guess that’s because I’m a brainwashed zombie.’
‘What are you doing?’
The voice was Domnic’s first indication that he wasn’t alone any more. He hadn’t heard the door opening. Still absorbed in the images on the screen, he murmured distractedly, ‘I’m watching Static.’
‘I can see that. Where are Rose and Jack?’
That one was harder. Domnic had to think about it – and in doing so, he found himself drawn back into the real world, realising only now how long he must have spent submerged in fantasy.
There was a stranger in the room. He leaped to his feet, alarmed.
‘Rose and Jack. This is their room. And mine. I’m the Doctor. You must be Domnic.’
‘How. . . how did you. . . ?’
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‘Because this note was under the door. It’s addressed to you. Well?
Aren’t you going to read it? You can read, can’t you?’
‘Of course I can. . . Is this a test or something? Of course I can read.
It’s allowed. We’re allowed magazines and. . . ’
‘The note,’ said the Doctor slowly, as if addressing an idiot. ‘I know that handwriting. Rose could be in danger.’
Domnic took the piece of paper from him and unfolded it. Beneath a letterhead giving the address of the hotel, a few brief words had been scribbled, apparently with an old-fashioned biro: ‘Gone with the Doctor to find monsters. Don’t wait up. R.’
And underneath, as if it had been an afterthought, ‘You see? He is real.’
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The journey to the Big White House passed in heavy silence.
Jack sat wedged between two cops on a wooden bench in the back of a police transport vehicle. The tramp who had called himself Hal Gryden sat opposite, sobbing to himself, avoiding Jack’s eye. Jack had been angry with him at first, but as time passed he found himself becoming more sympathetic. When finally he opened his mouth to say something, however – to break the ice – one of the cops jabbed him in the ribs with an elbow and snapped, ‘No lying in here!’
The whine of the hoverjets died down and they settled to the ground. An expression of deathly fear came over the tramp’s face and he looked as if he might throw up. He had to be carried out like a statue, his whole body frozen.
In contrast, Jack was determined to maintain his dignity. His hands still bound, he needed some help to stand – but as he hopped out of the vehicle, he made an attempt to gain some distance on his escorts, to show that he could walk on his own two feet.
He was surprised to be greeted by a media circus.
The air was thick with steel ball cameras, which whizzed around his head with lenses trained on him, bristling with microphones. Au-95
tomated lighting units jostled for position, shifting their reflectors to angle bright beams into his face. Almost blinded, Jack could just make out the shapes of reporters and photographers straining against an in-adequate cordon of police officers. And then his ears came under assault too, from a babble of raised voices.
‘– reporting live from the Big –’
‘– Home for the Cognitively –’
‘– the police have just brought in the notorious “Armoured Shark Liar” –’
‘– charged with twenty-three counts of Fiction in the First –’
‘– his lethal charisma –’
‘– didn’t care who he hurt in the –’
‘– ever to see the light of day again –’
He was almost flattered.
There was an athletic-looking woman in his path, chattering to a camera over her shoulder. ‘I’m going to try to snatch a few words with this desperate criminal, to find out what motivated Sector Two-Nine-Phi’s most appalling storytelling spree on record.’ A blonde head whipped around to face Jack. ‘Excuse me, sir, do you have anything to say to 8 News? How does it feel to be getting treatment for your disgusting problem?’
‘I don’t have a problem. Everything I said was the –’
She completely blanked him, turning back to her camera. ‘Well, as you could hear there, our sound man was forced to bleep out the detainee’s lies. Justice may have caught up with the Armoured Shark Liar, but it seems he is still trying to cause as much mayhem as he can.
Ronda Mirthwaite, 8 News, from the Big White House.’
And then Jack was in the hands of the cops again, making no attempt to shrug them off as they guided him firmly through the madness.
Into the asylum.
It was almost a relief to be inside. Certainly, it was quieter in here, though there were more people waiting for him: orderlies in black 96
jumpsuits, standing tensely, flexing their fists, waiting to spring should he prove the smallest threat to their order.
Jack kept very still. He remembered what he had heard about this place, what he’d read for himself on the Ethernet. He knew that its staff had the power to subject him to all manner of unpleasant procedures, should they choose. His best hope was to act the model inmate, give them no excuse.
At least until he could get his bearings and come up with a plan.
The tramp was nowhere to be seen. Evidently, he had been rushed ahead while Jack was getting the full treatment.
A tired-looking white-coated man rushed into the hallway and introduced himself to the cops as Nurse Cal Tyko. He took some cursory details from them – Jack’s name, crimes and the name of the arresting officer – and entered them in a data pad without once sparing a glance for Jack himself.
‘Mr Jack Harkness,’ he repeated to himself as he wrote.
‘Captain,’ Jack corrected him. ‘Captain Jack.’
‘Usual place?’ asked one of the cops.
Tyko nodded, then caught himself.
‘No. No, I’m afraid we don’t have a reception cell free at the moment. You’ve been keeping us busy these past few days.’
‘You can’t make room? Big catch, this one – you must have seen him on the TV. Liable to turn violent any moment.’
‘Actually,’ said Jack pointedly, ‘I haven’t hurt anyone.’
‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ another cop snarled.‘My sister was in one of them pubs where you told your lies. If she goes fantasy crazy. . . ’
‘I mean,’ said Jack, still addressing Tyko, ‘I haven’t used violence.
I’ve cooperated fully since my arrest, and I’m sure the officers here will confirm that.’
Tyko raised an eyebrow at the escorting cops and a couple of them nodded reluctantly. Nice to know the no-lying rule could work both ways.
The nurse shone a penlight into Jack’s eyes, nodded to himself and made another note on his pad, which he then turned to face Jack.
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‘What do you see here?’
The pad was displaying an irregular black shape, which looked to Jack like a spaceship orbiting a new world.
‘It’s a Rorschach inkblot test,’ he said.
‘And here?’
Tyko waggled a finger and the image changed. This next blot looked like a bronzed hunk reclining on a sun-lounger.
‘Ah, yeah,’ said Jack with an air of recognition, ‘I can see what that is. Another Rorschach inkblot test. It doesn’t look like anything. It’s a random shape.’
Tyko smiled in approval and took the pad away. ‘I think in your case, Mr Harkness, it should be safe to relax the usual formalities. I’ll have the orderlies show you to Common Room B until I can spare a moment for your induction interview.’
‘Are you sure?’ protested one of the cops – the one with the sister.
‘Putting him in with other people? What if he, you know, lies to them?’
‘One of the things our patients must learn here, Officer,’ said Tyko politely, ‘is to resist the many Fictions to which they are likely to be exposed.’
Can I talk to you about God?’
Jack looked up in surprise. No one had said a word to him since he’d been brought into the common room and left with a handful of other inmates, all wearing nightdresses and pyjamas. He’d been sitting clone at a table, thinking. He had hardly noticed the earnest-looking young woman who had taken a seat beside him until now.
‘You can talk about anything you like,’ he said.
‘He is real, you know.’
‘I’m sure he is to you, and that’s all that matters.’
‘He’s all that is real. The rest of us, the world, this universe, it’s all just His great dream – and if we disobey Him, if we turn the dream bad, then He’ll wake up and that’ll be the end of us all. That’s why we mustn’t dream for ourselves.’ She looked around Furtively as if she were committing a terrible deed by voicing the words. Then she brushed her long, straight hair away from her face and added in a 98
stage whisper, ‘Because that would mean we’re putting ourselves up alongside Him, and that would be blasphemy.’
‘Well, it’s a point of view,’ said Jack.
‘All these people around us, they’re sinners. They’re here because they’ve dreamed for themselves. Are you a sinner too?’
A dozen answers flooded into Jack’s mind, all of them flippant. He suppressed them and said simply, ‘I don’t think so.’ He was being watched, after all. The common room had two doors, and each had a security camera mounted over it and a black-clad orderly standing guard on either side.
One wall was taken up by a TV screen. Of course. About half the inmates present were watching, entranced. One man was sitting cross-legged on the floor, singing under his breath. A woman was giggling and shouting out words at random, about two a minute.
‘That’s why I’m here,’ confided the religious woman. ‘It’s my mission to save them.’
‘I thought you were a –’ he wanted to say ‘prisoner’ – ‘patient, like the rest of us. You’re wearing a nightdress.’
The woman nodded sadly. ‘That’s what they think – but everything is God’s plan. They say I shouldn’t talk about Him because they can’t prove He exists, but he does exist. He speaks to me. This is where He wants me to be.’
‘They’ve no right,’ said Jack angrily. ‘You believe what you want to believe.’
‘Fish!’ shouted the giggling woman.
‘God wants me to help them, guide them to the light. They think they’re showing me the truth, but it’s the other way round.’
‘What if –’ Jack checked that none of the orderlies were looking in their direction, then continued in a low voice – ‘what if we could do more? Wouldn’t you like to get out of this place? Resume your work outside?’
The woman shook her head emphatically.
‘But if the place is run by, um, sinners. . . People must talk about it.
The other patients, I mean. You must have heard them talking about getting out of here or just changing the way things are run, yeah?’
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‘Oh, yes – plotting in corners, planning to escape so they can dream and defy God’s will again. I always tell the nurses, when I hear them.
He won’t let them, you see. They can’t leave here. This is where they belong. This is where we all belong.’ The woman sat back and hugged herself, her eyes filling with melancholy.
‘Bum!’ shouted the giggler – which summed up Jack’s thoughts precisely.
‘What makes you think I’m lying?’
Jack leaned back in his chair, affecting an air of nonchalance but fixing his interrogator with a penetrating stare.
Seated across a desk from him in a small office on the third floor of the Big White House’s central block, Tyko sighed wearily. ‘You say you weren’t born on this world.’
‘It’s the truth. Can you find any record of me?’
‘I suspect that, in fact, you have given us a false name. This in itself suggests a level of disconnection.’
‘I’m Captain Jack Harkness. You’re Nurse Cal Tyko. This is Colony World 4378976.Delta-Four. You see, I’m perfectly connected.’
‘We have your scans, Mr Harkness. We’ll find your records.’
‘You won’t, you know. What is your problem, Cal? Why’s this so hard to believe? It’s not as if your world has never made First Contact. You came here from Earth. You have documentaries about space travel.’
‘Nobody has come to this world since it was founded.’
‘I’m not surprised, if this is how you treat your visitors.’
‘I find your story improbable in the extreme.’
‘And that’s the same as “impossible” how?’
‘You know the law perfectly well,’ said Tyko. ‘The onus is on you –’
‘To prove it, yeah, yeah. So let me out of here and I will. I’m serious.
I can show you my ship. We can even take in the TV cameras if you like.’
‘This is getting us nowhere,’ said Tyko irritably. ‘I need an address from you.’
Jack shrugged. ‘Don’t have one.’
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‘And a credit number.’
‘Don’t have one.’
‘You know, it’s not too late to give you a shot. I can send for the orderlies.’
‘Why? I’m remaining calm. I’m answering your questions.’
‘True. But maybe with these fanciful dreams of yours suppressed, you’ll feel like answering them truthfully.’
‘I’m not dreaming. Wanna know why?’
Tyko sighed and passed a hand over his eyes. ‘Tell me why, Mr Harkness.’
‘Captain. And the reason I’m not dreaming is that I don’t have to dream – because I made all my dreams come true. You’re so keen to know about my childhood – well, guess what I wanted to be when I was a kid? A big-time crook! I wanted the romance, the glamour, the adventure, the thrill of the chase. And you know what? I got all that, but bett
er.’
‘Even if I believed you, Mr Harkness –’
‘Captain.’
‘Even if I believed you, it would not justify your actions. You’ve no right to spread such stories to the populace. The truth can be as harmful as a lie if it’s so far beyond the experience of the listener that it seems like one to him.’
‘Yeah, I get that, I do. So take the cameras into my ship. We’ll broadcast the evidence to the world, let them see for themselves. Come on, Cal. You think I’ve harmed all these people, so let me put things right.
Show them the pictures, then they won’t have to imagine them, will they?’
‘That is quite impossible. I simply don’t have the authority –’
‘No, I’ll just bet you don’t – cos that’s the last thing you want, isn’t it? You, the police, the media. . . You tell everyone that fiction is dangerous, but the truth is you just don’t want them to think about anything – anything they don’t have, whether it’s real or not.’
‘And why do you think that might be, Mr Harkness?’ asked Tyko primly.
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‘To keep them down, in their place. You might not have a government, but I’ll just bet there’s someone getting very rich and fat somewhere, while the rest of you accept your lot and don’t ask for more.’
‘You’ve met some of our other guests. Did they seem rational to you? Did they seem connected? What about the gentleman who was brought in with you? What about him, Mr Harkness?’
‘I’ve told you, it’s Captain. And. . . OK, I don’t know. Maybe you’re doing something to them. Maybe. . . ’
Tyko had hit on the flaw in Jack’s argument, the very point on which his faith had become more and more shaken ever since ‘Hal Gryden’
had turned out to be a phoney.
‘You must realise how paranoid you sound.’
‘So I don’t have it all worked out yet – but I know one thing. I know there’s nothing wrong with having a dream.’
‘And that’s what you’ve been doing, isn’t it, Mr Harkness? Dreaming.
Picturing what’s not there, what is not real to you. Maybe you’ve been reading about the space pioneers and ignoring the warnings, imagining what it would have been like to have flown with them. Or perhaps you’ve been watching Static. You’ve been using the right side of your brain, haven’t you, Mr Harkness? And you know the right side is the wrong side.’