B00DPX9ST8 EBOK

by Parkin, Lance

  The fourth Doctor and Romana discovered that the sixth segment to the Key to Time was a person: Princess Astra of Atrios. The Shadow’s space station - and the Shadow himself - were destroyed, and the Key was successfully assembled. The Doctor refrained from surrendering the Key to the Black Guardian - who appeared in the guise of the White Guardian - and again dispersed the segments throughout space-time, earning the Black Guardian’s animosity.

  Romana became the new sixth segment of the Key to Time. As a side effect of Astra having been the Key segment, her life was extended at the cost of draining energy from those around her. The Atrions withered and died in large numbers, and their life expectancy dropped to twenty-nine years. Astra - not knowing she was the cause of her people’s blight - became president of the Atrion Alliance and survived for two hundred years. The position of the Marshall of Atrios went unfilled. [1749]

  Towards the End of the Universe

  Many billions of years from now, the universe was cold and almost dead. The suns were exhausted. The last few survivors of the universe huddled around whatever energy sources they could find. [1750]

  Eight billion years in the future, humanity was long dead. Mutter’s Spiral had been abandoned by all sentient life. [1751] A few ten billions of years in the future, the Conservers existed in a black hole, preserving information there in the face of the universe’s death. They engineered their own creation by sending avatars into the past to bring a colony ship to their black hole. The Doctor visited the Conservers. [1752]

  Timewyrm: Apocalypse [1753]

  Billions of years in the future, the guardians of the universe, even the Time Lords, were long extinct. The people of Kirith (the only planet orbiting a red giant in Galaxy QSO 0046 at the edge of the universe) never grew old or unhappy. For three thousand eight hundred and thirty-three years, the Kirithons had been ruled by the eighty-four Panjistri, who gave them food and technology. For nearly a thousand years, the Panjistri performed genetic experiments, forcing the evolution of the Kirithons in an attempt to create a being that had reached the Omega Point: an omniscient, omnipotent entity capable of halting the destruction of the universe. They succeeded in creating a golden sphere of expanding light, but the machine destroyed itself and the Panjistri, knowing that the universe must end.

  The Divergents almost emerged into our universe sixty billion years in the future, towards the end of time. Uncle Winky’s Wonderland had been moved several times and was situated atop the ruins of Rassilon’s lab on Gallifrey. Uncle Winky revived from stasis, but died from his heart condition. [1754] The Ministers of Grace travelled from the end of time to fight in the Millennium War. [1755]

  There was a huge disaster that led to galaxies being evacuated and whole sections of the timeline being erased. The Doctor’s people were somehow responsible, and the four surviving Time Lords used their great powers to impose control on the rest of the universe. The last Time Lord became the first ever Emperor of the entire Universe, ruling over a divided and broken populace that split into Factions and Houses. These included the Klade, “goblin shapeshifters” and cybernetic gangsters - the ultimate descendants of the Daleks, Sontarans, Rutans and the Cybermen.

  Most of the people of the universe relocated to the Needle, a light-year long structure that was the remains of a TARDIS that had tried to escape the pull of a black hole. The largest building on the Needle was the Librarinth, where all surviving knowledge and art was preserved. [1756]

  Griffin the Unnaturalist resided on the Needle. [1757]

  Father Time [1758]

  The Doctor and two companions visited the planets Galspar and Falkus around this time. The Doctor also fought a robotic tyrant who panicked, accidentally destroyed his own palace and killed his own wife. This robot, who later assumed the identity “Mr Gibson” to blend in on twentieth-century Earth, vowed revenge.

  At least some of the Emperor’s subjects, such as the Klade - the super-evolved descendants of the Daleks - resented Imperial rule. One Klade senator, the mother of Zevron and Ferran, incited revolution against the Emperor but was assassinated. Zevron stormed the Imperial Palace, killing and scattering all of the Imperial Family. The Emperor was killed. The Emperor’s daughter, Miranda, was rescued by her nanny and taken down a time corridor to twentieth-century Earth.

  Over the years, Zevron tracked down and killed every other member of the Imperial Family. Finally, he located Miranda and led the mission to kill her on Earth in the early nineteen-eighties.

  When Zevron failed to return, Ferran became Prefect of Faction Klade. Some years later, Ferran received a distress signal from Sallak, Zevron’s deputy. Ferran travelled to twentieth-century Earth to complete Zevron’s mission but failed and returned to his native time.

  A team of Ferran’s scholars spent fifteen years in the Librarinth, and eventually pinpointed Miranda’s whereabouts. Ferran also recovered a derelict sentient ship built by the People of the Worldsphere, which he christened the Supremacy. The political situation had deteriorated, putting the Houses and Factions at open war, and galactic civilisation was on the brink of collapse. Ferran believed Miranda could access sealed sections of the Librarinth and thus give him the power to dominate the other Factions. Using the Supremacy, he set off to the twentieth century.

  Miranda and Ferran returned to this time. Convinced she could unite the universe, Miranda was crowned Empress.

  Miranda [1759]

  Miranda woke aboard Ferran’s ship, the Supremacy. She was attacked by an assassin robot which she dispatched, but which turned out to be one of many attempts on her life that night. She was being taken to the Needle to be formally crowned, and shown the forces at the disposal of the Empress. A handmaiden, Keli, warned her that Ferran would try to kill her. Miranda got a little drunk at her first formal reception, but nonetheless fought off an alien attempt to abduct her. She learned that Ferran wanted access to the Librarinth, the storehouse of universal information - he planned to marry her, which would give him the authority to open it. Miranda and Keli escaped into the forests of the Needle, where they were met by hero dynamic space hero Mack Gideon... who was promptly killed by Rum and Thelash, trackers sent by Ferran to find her...

  ... Miranda was destined to marry Ferran and become Empress.

  Hope [1760]

  Taking the TARDIS into the far future, the eighth Doctor, Fitz and Anji landed on planet A245, known locally as Endpoint. It was an icy planet with a toxic environment. The TARDIS fell through the frozen crust of an acid sea, and the Doctor asked the cyborg Silver - the warlord of the nearest settlement, Hope - for assistance. Silver was from the far past, the year 3006.

  Anji was tempted to use the cloning technology of this era to recreate her dead boyfriend, Dave, and granted Silver scans of the TARDIS in return for this. The Doctor found survivors from other colonies were murdering the people of Hope to harvest Kallisti, a hormone that could revive more of the colonists from cryo-sleep. Silver found the sleepers and converted them into Silverati: half-synthetic soldiers loyal to him. With his soldiers and the colonists’ hypertunnel, Silver attempted to take control of a richer planet. The Doctor exiled Silver and his Silverati to the barren planet A2756.

  There were no pure humans left, but human genes survived in a number of races. Apple trees were extinct until Silver cloned one from an apple core that the Doctor gave him. The universe was past the point of sustainable expansion, and the rate of star death had dramatically increased.

  Miranda brought the Factions and Houses together and united the people of the universe. She had at least one child, a daughter named Zezanne. Zezanne’s father died. The Council of Eight kidnapped Miranda and Zezanne when Zezanne was a teenager. [1761] It was possible that the electrocuted board imprisoning the Celestial Toymaker remained active until around the year two trillion. [1762]

  ? - Singularity [1763]

  The planet Ember had served as an outpost from which to watch other galaxies for signs of intelligent life. Toward the end of the universe,
some descendants of humanity prolonged the lifespan of Ember’s sun as most stars in the universe extinguished, and thereby survived for some millennia. They believed that the Time Lords had opened a gate to another realm and escaped with all the life they deemed worthy, leaving humanity’s children to perish.

  Ember’s sun began to fade also, and the survivors began swapping their intelligences with Earthlings in the late twentieth century, hoping to facilitate the creation of a Singularity entity. The plan failed, whereupon the conspirators were forced to return to this era and quickly died off.

  The laws of time and causality started to break down as Ember approached its end. Nonetheless, the fifth Doctor and Turlough arrived as one of the conspirators - Xen, who claimed to be the last human - passed on.

  The stars of the universe were burning out and fading away. The Science Foundation initiated the Utopia Project to preserve mankind, and enable it to survive the collapse of reality itself. [1764] Professor Yana was found as a boy, naked in a storm off the coast of the Silver Devastation. He was discovered with a watch, which he kept with him as he went from one refugee ship to another. No university had existed for a thousand years, but Yana became accomplished at science and took the title “Professor” as an affectation. [1765]

  100,000,000,000,000 - Utopia [1766]

  The planet Malcassairo had been home to an advanced race of humanoid insects, the Malmooth, but the Conglomer-ation there died. Chantho was the last representative of this species, and she served as Yana’s assistant for seventeen years.

  A signal came from far beyond the Condensed Wilderness, out toward the Wild Lands and the Dark Matter Reefs. It said nothing more than “Come to Utopia”, and some remnants of humanity gathered on Malcassairo in preparation to journey there. They huddled to protect themselves from the cannibalistic Futurekind - said to be what mankind would become - while Yana and Chanthro worked to complete a rocket that would evacuate everyone save themselves.

  The tenth Doctor, Martha and Captain Jack arrived and helped to complete the rocket. Martha learned that Yana was - unknown even to himself - the Master, disguised as a human to escape the Time War. The rocket launched. The Master learned of his true identity, but was shot by Chanthro, whom he had fatally wounded. He regenerated, stealing the TARDIS and marooning the Doctor and his companions, but not before the Doctor fused the TARDIS’ controls. It could only travel to this point in time and within eighteen months of the Ship’s last departure in 2008.

  The Doctor, Martha and Captain Jack returned to the twenty-first century using Jack’s vortex manipulator. [1767]

  The Master returned to this future era with his wife Lucy, and found the darkness overtaking the humans on Utopia. He arranged to house their shrunken heads into metallic spheres equipped with weaponry, and named them the Toclafane. Six billion Toclafane were created in this fashion. The Master then returned to the twenty-first century, and converted the TARDIS into a Paradox Machine.

  (=) Thanks to the Paradox Machine, the Toclafane were able to travel back and enslave their ancestors.

  With the Paradox Machine’s destruction, the Toclafane were stranded at the end of the universe. [1768]

  Event Two

  “One mad prophet martyr journeyed too far and saw the Timewyrm. He saw it in a timeline that he could not be sure of, devouring Rassilon or his shade, during the Blue Shift, that time of final conflict when Fenric shall slip his chains and the evil of the worlds shall rebound back on them in war.” [1769]

  The Doctor owned a copy of A Universal History of Fable and Demonology, Written at the End of All Time. [1770]

  100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - The Infinity Doctors [1771]

  The Needle had been inhabited for tens of millions of years, but now it was all but abandoned. Ruined cities dotted its surface, and the atmosphere had frozen. The only known survivors were the predator animals named the Maltraffi, mushrooms and four “knights”: Gordel, Willhuff, Pallant and Helios. Each could only remember the future - with less and less to remember each day - and each had his own theory as to their origins. They may have been the last survivors of the Children of Kasterborous, human/Gallifreyan hybrids who intervened in the universe at great cost; superevolved Thals who fled the penultimate destruction of Skaro at the start of the Final Dalek War; members of the People of the Worldsphere, left behind when everyone else transcended reality; or the last High Evolutionaries (Helios might have been Merlin, or his son).

  The Doctor arrived from Gallifrey to find the god Ohm, who was trapped in the black hole at one end of the Needle. Two of the Doctor’s colleagues, the Magistrate and Larna, were sent in to rescue him when he vanished. Omega emerged from the black hole wearing the Doctor’s body, banishing the Magistrate somewhere unknown and taking Larna back to Gallifrey.

  Omega sought to attain ultimate power by unleashing the Eye of Harmony. The Doctor had been reunited with his wife as part of these events, but was forced to lose her again. He once more defeated Omega.

  The Time Lords believed that a powerful force, the Dark Flame, stemmed from a pocket dimension that was pushed out of space-time during the Universe’s collapse. [1772] The Last Museum stood as a collection of the human race’s greatest objects and achievements. It was located at the end of Time, at the exact centre of the universe. The Council of Eight member Soul served at the Museum, disguised as an old man named Singleton. [1773]

  The Epoch claimed to be from the end of time, and that they would meet Bernice Summerfield there. [1774]

  Event Two Minus Sixty-Six Minutes - The Judgement of Isskar / The Chaos Pool [1775]

  Extra-dimensional beings - the Grace - sought to maintain the universal balance. To that end, they forged the Key to Time in a pool on the planet Chaos - which existed sixty-six minutes from the end of time. Chaos had been known as the planet Safeplace, and was the final resting place of the Teuthoidians. The Key was a perfect cube consisting of six segments, which when combined helped to maintain the equilibrium of time itself. The segments contained the elemental force of the universe, and could adopt any shape or size. They were dispersed throughout space-time until it became imperative to restore the universal balance. The White Guardian sent the fourth Doctor and Romana to recover the segments; they did so, then dispersed the segments once more.

  The Doctor had used a synthetic sixth segment to complete the Key, but in doing so had destabilised it. The scattered Key segments decayed and damaged local space-time; a total collapse would destroy the universe. The Grace created two living Key-tracers - Amy and her sister Zara - and tasked them with retrieving three segments each. The fifth Doctor accompanied Amy on her quest.

  They returned to Chaos as President Astra came in search of the legendary Chaos Pool, which she hoped would cure her people’s deteriorating condition. The weakened and amnesiac White Guardian - now passing as Professor Lydall, an Atrion - had created a fold in hyperspace, liking the extreme beginning and end of time. The Teuthoidians, servants of the White Guardian, travelled through the fold and engaged an army of the Black Guardian’s supporters.

  Romana arrived with the Black Guardian, having answered the Doctor’s cry for help from Gallifrey. The Key to Time was assembled after Astra re-acquired the essence of the sixth segment from Romana, then transformed into it. The Grace declared that neither of the Guardians should possess the Key, and banished them back to the howling void to continue their conflict.

  The Doctor destroyed the Key to Time within the Chaos Pool - an act that dispersed the Grace throughout eternity.

  Amy and Zara were left as human beings, but retained many of their powers. Zara retired to Atrios while Amy accepted Romana’s invitation to visit Gallifrey.

  Graceless: The End [1776]

  Abby and Zara navigated warships belonging to the space pirate Kreekpolt back to Chaos, hoping to absorb enough lingering power from the Grace to heal Kreekpolt’s gravely wounded daughter, the Lady Persephone. Kreekpolt accepted an offer from an incarnation of the Grac
e, and traded his life for his daughter’s health - the restored Persephone vowed vengeance against the sisters for their role in her father’s death. The Grace told Abby and Zara that they would live as long as they wished, and left them with time rings that functioned so long as they were together. They left to perform good acts as penance for their various crimes, accompanied by Marek - their mutual lover, and the father of Zara’s infant daughter Joy.

  Sometime Never [1777]

  The Council of Eight existed in the Vortex Palace, right at the end of time. By placing unique crystals at the beginning of time, they mapped out events across the universe, and generated energy from unused potential timelines by correctly predicting the course of events. This energy was stored in Schrodinger Cells. The Council sent apes mutated by the Time Winds (“the Agents of the Council”) to ensure their version of history transpired, and also recruited Sabbath to unwittingly work on their behalf. The Council deemed many of the Doctor’s companions a threat, as they were touched by his innate ability to influence history, and thus engineered the possible deaths of Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan, Melanie Bush, Ace and Samantha Jones.

  The Council leader, Octan, planned to destroy human history with a starkiller, releasing vast amounts of energy. This energy would paradoxically create the Council of Eight, and in all probability allow them to survive the end of the universe. Octan took Miranda hostage, but she sacrificed herself, allowing the eighth Doctor a free hand to fight them. Sabbath killed himself to thwart his former employers, and his death helped to instigate the destruction of the Vortex Palace.