Memoirs of a Timelord

by Ralph Rotten

  I stopped dead at that. He was right, I never blamed anyone but myself for my death, and even that was stupid. I didn't give myself breast cancer. So would she really be mad at me?

  "I have harvested millions of souls, and every single one of them had at least one complaint, but not once was it that I had saved their life. Harvested beings may be upset at the separation from family, or hometown, or Mother's cooking, but never once did someone come to me and say they were unhappy with being snatched from the boat dock of the River Styx. When I was harvested, I personally danced a small jig to discover that I was still of this world. Those last moments had been so terrifying that the absolute relief of finding myself free from the torturer's blade had made me forget all of the other inconveniences of my situation. I was alive and well, and that trumped every other emotion in my book." DorLek flashed me that grin of his.

  I could not help but smile at the way he had of knowing exactly what to say. My guess is that he read me like a book thru the Guf. In his time as a Master Trainer of Timelords he had seen thousands of students like me. Hell, he's prolly had this very same conversation a hundred times before.

  As an apprentice in my residency, I was expected to build my own orientation facilities for new-hires. Consider that one of my functions as a Timelord is to find the manpower (and woman power) to maintain my network. You need tens of thousands to manage a planet the size of Earth, and these employees need to be processed before they can be put to work. So think of the Reception Facility as a machine where you insert raw materials, ie; good, capable people of limited technological background. The process acclimates them to their new world while updating their technological training. It's all very similar to Devices Training and other coursework that I went through in my early days. Add a little smidgen of grief counseling and out of the far end of the machine comes the finished product: brand new employees, each ready to blend into their target society better than the locals.

  But first I gotta build the place.

  I found the perfect site on the far side of the Zale Stellar Nursery. It was a dark corner of the galaxy where no sentient beings would reach for at least a hundred-thousand standard solars. Just a hunk of rock orbiting a young class IV star in its prime. With a lot of debris still in the young solar system, it was easy for me to install a hydrogen drag and pull in as much of the element as possible. Being a core component in water, I would need a lot. The process is slow, so I go back in time a century or so and leave a few automated units working on the water problem. By the time I actually started construction they were practically done

  After that I had Aldoo help me install a reduction unit with enough power to jump-start the planet. He was busy finishing his internship under Dorat Tuva, so he wasn't exactly happy about spending a week doing my work. But I'd promised to pull him out of the timeline for six months if he'd help me, so I knew he'd say yes. Who wouldn't go for a six month vacation? Dorat Tuva worked his students like slave-dawgs. The old guy didn't believe in days off so I had a pretty good idea that Aldoo would be looking for a parachute right about now. With my abilities I can drop the guy off in the recent past where he is temporarily free of his academic obligations, at least until time catches up with him again.

  With just the right genetic material, the planetoid developed nicely into a beautiful, Eden-like garden. I have to admit that I was influenced by the classic movie The Time Machine. (The original with Rod Taylor.) Remember the garden the Eloi lived in? Where the fruit grew on perfect trees and green grass carpeted the ground? Yeah, I built that, but without any Mogwai to ruin the party. It was a lush planet, saturated with freshwater lakes and a jungle canopy of edible fruits.

  I took a few months of searching over my little planetoid before I found the perfect place for my rehab center. It was a beautiful little valley with a stream passing to the east. As I stood on the perimeter of the site, I pulled the tiniest bit of material from my pocket. It was a known as a SMot; just a smidgen of class V morphic matter that could contain extensive programming. I think that last part needs a little emphasis; a Dot contains some pretty fucking fantastic programming! I've been tweaking the code in that little thing for months now, just to make sure everything was perfect. Giving it a flick, I watch it touchdown in the thick grass.

  The transformation starts slow as the Dot first begins the process of converting the ambient materials at the sub-atomic level. You can see the effect wash over the landscape as countless atoms are sliced and reconfigured into a programmable polymorphic state. Wasting no time, the Dot immediately begins implementing its programming and the first buildings begin to spring up. Slowly the entire valley is popping and growing in strange ways as houses and structures of every shape began to emerge from the ground. The earth shakes from the fury of the activity all around me.

  The ground rumbled as more and more of the complex sprang up throughout the valley. In the distant foothills I can see the small buildings coming to life out of the granite that had been there. Although I was awe inspired by the vision, I had started to grow used to the things. But lemme tell ya, the first time I saw a SMot used, my heart skipped two beats. If you didn't know how they worked you'd think it was hand of God kinda stuff. Truly, it does indeed look like a miracle is happening down there.

  When it was done I just stood there with a smile on my face. It was a sprawling complex, with thousands of luxury apartments, pools, and entertainment facilities. Really more of a college campus. I believed the place should be nice enough that the residents don't feel like cattle being herded into a chute. These are valued employees, the people who do your heavy lifting. From the start they should be taken care of. As a manager I am always looking at the long term...really long term. If you take care of your talent, then you can get hundreds of years out of them. Meexon had been with the Boss for several millennia. Bara told me that a few of the guys who still work for DorLek predated humanity. Seriously, they'd been working for the Boss since before the invention of humans. A smart Timelord knows to take care of those kinda guys.

  The facilities were so complete that it included the ability to project hundreds of housekeepers like Didra at a single time. Food grew on every tree, and there was no need to go anywhere in a hurry. This was a place for people to come to terms with their own death while preparing for a new career. People still suffer from PTSD in the future; we just understand how to deal with it better.

  I had fussed over the details for weeks after it was complete. I'd even taken the time to spend a few nights sleeping in the various apartments and condos just to make sure they were perfect. It was stupid since the place was morphic; you could correct your flaws anytime you needed to. The whole structure was designed to grow with their needs. Really, I was just delaying the inevitable...procrastinating.

  Finally after running out of excuses to delay the event any further, I tapped the smooth surface of the matter buffer and released the crew en masse. With a collective gasp, 1106 crew members of the KuluMata each responded to the last thing they had experienced. More than a few screamed, a few more collapsed to the ground with a housekeeper there to help let them down gently.

  I had labored for years on how to place them, but in the end I knew there was one person that Roxy needed to see first when she woke up. Standing no more than three feet away was Tech Lieutenant Rogars, still wearing his wedding ring. Once they saw each other, the emotions were so powerful that I could feel them right through the Guf. It made me happy, envious, and proud all at the same time. Up until that moment when I tasted their true love, I hadn't realized just how lonely I was. It had been years since I had felt anything but professional detachment. People I met were just blocks to be rearranged...or tools to be used. Even with perfect memory, I had forgotten what it felt like to be held. I so dearly wanted what they had. Who wouldn't? It was like a page from a fairy tale. I'd felt that way once, but he was gone now. Even if I found my way home he would still be lost to me. The Guf does not like to return that which is already in
its possession.

  In the months that followed, the survivors learned to cope with their ordeal. Many of them never even knew they were dead, but others could still remember the last seconds as their body swelled painfully in the vacuum of space. People died in different ways, some more traumatic than others. At the same time that the shrinks are pounding out the dents in their heads, the entire crew is working hard on mastering their new skill sets. Every part of the process is meant to be cathartic.

  I knew that Aldoo would go straight back to Veena and tell her what I was doing. Not that he was particularly blabby, it's that my sister would interrogate him as soon as she saw him. So as you can guess, word that Roxy was out of deep freeze brought Veena in. It was nice to get the three of us, no, four now with Meesha, to get us all together again. It had been years since I socialized, let alone hit Colbai with the girlfriends. Yeah, we painted their atmosphere red. Veena still knew the best places in the galaxy, and with Meesha as our designated driver, we were free to get as stupid as we wanted.

  Holocaust

  The building was dank and smelled of death. Already there were dozens of bodies littering the floor in every direction. The ethnic cleansing had been in effect for days now, with squads of Tipputh stormtroopers taking turns with the grisly business of exterminating the Euro. Were I another kind of person, I might have marveled at how organized this assembly line of death had been. At this rate the station I was standing in could murder ten thousand a day, as long as they can dig the mass graves fast enough. That had been one of their few oversights of their system; no bulldozers or heavy equipment so the bodies were being stacked outside for the Volos to eat.

  I don't know how I stood it, how I was able to stand by and literally witness thousands of these executions. Sometimes they'd march entire families into the killing room. Then fifteen seconds later a crew would carry the bodies out the back door. That was assuming that the executioners weren't sidetracked by an attractive Euro female. Whenever that happened, they usually took a rape-break while the entire crew sexually assaulted her in turn, usually while the family watched. Once they were done, she'd be stabbed to death, or sometimes even stomped to death. All the while the Tipputh Stormtroopers would be laughing and carrying on merrily. A few of these guys would laugh so hard that they'd get a stitch in the side; doubled over with laughter while butchering women and children.

  But then, I'd seen this all before. One of my first MoTi experiences had been the massacre at Vladistar. I'd witnessed the death of the KuluMata, and watched Goarn tear itself apart during the Civic Revolution. But even among these atrocities, the Tipputh really distinguished themselves today. With hundreds of these killing factories set up all over the region, they would eradicate the last of their ethnic foes within a few weeks. Oooo, they were laughing now, but those smiles would be gone when it was my turn.

  I blinked involuntarily as I watched them run a sword through a small child and the mother that clutched him. Penetrating both beings through their lung sacks, there was no scream from either as they sagged to the ground in agony. The Tipputh had preferred the edged weapons because it revealed less of their activity to the masses waiting outside for their own turn. If the victims being held outside heard the familiar sound of blaster fire, they'd be harder to keep corralled, and that would hurt efficiency. These fucking cocksmokes had thought of everything.

  I watch the light leave their eyes before I use one of the buffers in my pocket to harvest them. Leaving an exact duplicate in their place while fully phased, I was invisible to the Tipputh as they went about their way happily.

  There was one of them, the guy with the pigtails, who stood out even among this group of sociopaths. DenGal Moc, Grand-sergeant of the 55th Infantry. For him it wasn't enough that the victims died painfully. This asshole would go out of his way to inflict pain. If any prisoner ever looked him in the eye as he walked past, then that Euro was pulled out of line and beaten to death right then and there for all to see. He was also fond of blinding the parents while their children looked on. But the Grand Sergeant's greatest accomplishment had been six weeks earlier when they cleansed Dumbrusk. He had ordered his engineers to build a massive machine called the Euro-processor. Intended to speed up the job, the device was nothing more than a giant wood chipper. Seriously, they were dropping people into a huge paper shredder. Not only that, but it was written policy that Euros were to be dropped into the device feet first. Yeah, he was that kinda guy. The Grand Sergeant ran ten thousand screaming Euro through the Processor. Their green blood ran like a river in the streets. Luckily an enemy mortar finally landed on the giant woodchipper and destroyed it, killing the operator in the process.

  I admit; I did help steer that mortar shell a little.

  You see, I was there to retrieve a stockpile of genetic material for future colonization. This was something that Editors did all the time; harvest the dead. I was about to begin working on my thesis and calculations showed that I would need a lot of material to work with. To this end I would need to create my own library of biological specimens. You never knew what kind of seasonings you might need down the road when you're making your galactic soufflé. Every species has a different flavor to them, and it was good to keep a well-stocked spice rack.

  So under instructions from the Boss, I was taking advantage of the situation and harvesting souls while they were on sale. Timelords are always drawn to these mass-death scenarios because it makes our job easier by allowing us to gather volunteers en masse. The only downside is standing in blood for three days with a buncha mass murderers. Once I reached ten thousand harvested, I decided that was all I could take. After that I loaded them all into a sub-space depository I'd built. The device would hold them in stasis and free from any molecular degradation for thousands of years. It might be a while before I need to use them, so they'd need to be properly stored if I wanted viable samples. But there I go thinking like a flatlander again. In the temporal scheme of things, they'd probably be picked up by a future-me in two minutes. The event is bookmarked in my Onkx so I'll just come right back to that exact spot in time and space when I need colonists.

  Anyhow, once I was done harvesting, the next step was to follow the timeline and go find those sumbitches of the 55th once history had forgotten about them. It took a few weeks, but finally I tracked 'em all down, including the Grand Sergeant himself. I looked forward to harvesting them.

  So what'd I do with them? For starters, I modified their skin and lungs to make them fireproof, but I left their central nervous system stock. After that I threw the whole lot of them into a coliseum I built, way in the back of the Boss's house. With them standing down below like gladiators in a ring, I took a few minutes to monologue to them about the severity of their sins and why they were here. I even imparted some MoTi memories so they would know I wasn't gonna fall for their claims of mistaken identity. Ooooh, I was enjoying it. These guys were gonna feel the wrath. I waited until the Grand Sergeant started talking his racist trash, and that's when I set the ring on fire, all of it.

  Now, it's true that with my abilities at that point, I could just as easily have made the whole event occur in their mind and saved the effort of building all this stuff. Yep, I coulda, but then what would I watch while I ate my popcorn? Mmmmm. Extra butter. It felt good to watch them squirm in the flames below. The pain would last as long as the fire, but they would never burn up or die from it. They each deserved a thousand deaths, or more. Really I just lost track of time as I sat there munching on popcorn and watching the assholes of the 55th being boiled in plasma. After spending days in their company, and having witnessed their wanton cruelty, it felt almost therapeutic to see them writhing in agony.

  I was halfway through my popcorn when I realized that the Boss was there, sitting in the balcony right next to me. As soon as I noticed he was there, I sat bolt upright. I'd been so pissed off at these guys that it never even occurred to me that what I was doing may not be right. But the minute I looked at DorLek's expressio
n, I knew he was gonna have some kind of objection. The DuNai do not issue a fully enabled Onkx' to sociopaths and axe murderers. Apparently they also frown on deep frying.

  "But they murdered thousands!" I tried to defend myself and sent him the images that had been rattling around in my brain for the last month.

  "There is no dispute that they are evil men." DorLek nodded understandably as he looked me in the eyes.

  "I am not gonna let those guys into my Guf unless they have paid some penance. They got off Scott-free." Even though I knew it was a losing battle, I kept at it hoping that the Boss would at least allow me a few concessions. I could tell by that look in his eyes, I knew there would be a lesson in this somewhere. With a wave of my hand I shut down the fire, leaving the men writhing on the ground.

  "Examine the equation." He directed me. "So you take these horrible men, torture them until they are stark raving mad, then release them into your Guf? If their presence bothers you that much then erase them, but never resort to this. As an Editor you must take every precaution to keep yourself from becoming corrupted."

  "But they deserve to be punished for what they did. Erasing them is too easy, just ffffftt and they're gone from all existence. They deserve to feel what all those people felt, those thousands of people, standing in line with their children and their parents, these assholes need to feel every bit of that." I moped as I felt tired right down to my bones. When the Boss put a hand on my shoulder I could feel his mind in mine as he helped me gain control of the memories that were running rampant everywhere. As he worked, slowly boxing up each of those images, I could feel the calm wash over me. I had been unable to see it myself, but my own absolute recall had taken me into a processing loop as thousands of memories flooded my active memory. I felt like a home computer with a virus or unresponsive program. I had just experienced the downside of absolute recall; if you failed to manage it properly, it could drive you stark raving mad.