Doctor Who BBC N07 - The Stone Rose

by Doctor Who

  She’d got as far as removing the stopper when a paralysing thought hit her. She turned to the GENIE. ‘How do I know this isn’t an illusion as well? That you’re not in my mind, making me think I’m seeing what’s really there, but it isn’t there really?’

  The GENIE hmmphed. ‘My dear young lady, I can assure you this is reality. And I do not lie. So unless you wish to carryon for the rest of your life assuming that you are not experiencing what you are actually experiencing, I urge you to accept that fact.’

  ‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you?’ muttered Rose.

  But she carried on anyway, raising the phial, tipping it slowly, carefully, to one side. . .

  A single drop, a liquid emerald, splashed on to the stone cheek of the Doctor.

  And the cheek became flesh. Pale flesh, dark hair, intense brown eyes. His tunic rippled back into cloth, ten toes wiggled within his sandals. Arms flexed, and grabbed Rose into a hug. Soft lips pressed hers with a kiss of gratitude and joy and unspeakable pleasure at being alive.

  ‘Wotcha,’ Rose said, smiling through her tears.

  ‘Hello,’ he replied softly, his eyes shining.

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  ‘I think you must be real,’ she said after a moment. ‘My imagination’s not that good.’

  The Doctor grinned at her and stepped back. He took in the now-calm shrine, the GENIE, Vanessa. ‘Looks like you’ve managed to sort everything out while I was gone,’ he said. ‘I’m impressed.’

  Rose laughed. ‘You’d never believe the half of it. I’ve left a few bits for you, though. Didn’t want you feeling like I was taking over.’ She began to count off on her fingers. ‘You’ve got to get Vanessa here back to her own time, restore the true emperor to the throne – emperors do have thrones, right? – maybe bring back a few people from Timbuktu or their second childhood. . . and all without sacrificing two million people on the GENIE’s altar.’ She explained everything to him.

  Not really to her surprise, the Doctor didn’t seem particularly concerned.

  ‘Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy,’ he said.

  ‘If power’s what’s

  needed, then we have rather a large source of power near at hand.

  Starts with a T. . . ’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Rose, ‘but the GENIE can’t just reverse wishes. It said so.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said the Doctor. ‘It undid that nothingness thing, didn’t it?’

  Rose frowned. ‘Yeah, but. . . Hang on!’ She turned to the GENIE.

  ‘When I wished for the Doctor to be back, you didn’t grant it!’

  The GENIE looked slightly embarrassed. ‘I think if you consider that time,’ it said, ‘you will recall that no such wish was ever made.’

  Rose thought. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I was going to wish my wish undone, and you said you didn’t advise it.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said the GENIE. ‘I didn’t. I cannot help any further deductions you made from my simple statement.’

  Rose’s mouth dropped open. ‘You mean if I had gone ahead with my wish – or just wished the Doctor was back or something – this whole thing could have been sorted hours ago?’

  The little dragon head bobbed up and down. ‘But why?’ she asked.

  ‘I cannot refuse to grant a wish. Therefore I had to attempt to convince you that such a wish should not be made.’

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  ‘Right,’ cried Rose. ‘In that case I wish all those wishes you granted at the party were undone. Bring people back, and make them their real age, and stop that cute but apparently megalomaniacal boy from thinking he’s the emperor.’

  But as the thunder rumbled, Rose took in the rest of what the GENIE

  had said.

  ‘Why did you try to convince me not to wish the Doctor back?’

  The Doctor stepped in. ‘I think our friend here was afraid,’ he said.

  ‘Afraid of what?’ Rose asked.

  ‘Afraid of me,’ said the Doctor,

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  Rose was shocked. ‘Why should it be afraid of you? Did it think you were gonna squash it like so many Slitheen?’

  The Doctor nodded. ‘Perhaps. I think it saw inside my mind, just a little way, when I realised what it was. A GENIE, from the year 2375, created by Salvatorio Moretti.’

  ‘My father,’ put in Vanessa.

  The Doctor nodded in acknowledgement. ‘GENIEs were supposed to be a boon,’ went on the Doctor. ‘A great boon, a brilliant boon. This was a society where everything was available, and its citizens came to expect that they could have a thing as soon as think of it. The GENIE

  was supposed to facilitate that. No more popping down the shops, just tell the GENIE what you want. Fancy a holiday? No waiting around, you’d be there quicker than winking. Envy your neighbour his hovercar? You’ve got one just the same.’

  He paused and gave a sad smile.

  ‘Humans always muck things up, though, don’t they? Just with the prototype GENIEs, things began to get out of hand. People would wish they had a GENIE too and – pop! – there one was. They spread all over the planet like scaly little bunnies. The inventors had no idea 151

  how powerful they were, because they’d failed to take into account the I in AI – that the GENIEs were intelligent. They could think for themselves, work out how to tap into power systems to grant larger and larger wishes. And they’d also failed to take into account human nature. Envy your neighbour his hovercar? Well, why not wish it was yours instead, and that your neighbour was cast into poverty and forced to envy you? Fancy a holiday? Why not wish for the sun to always shine – you’ll get a tan, and who cares if the planet slowly dries out? Why not wish that your enemies become weak and that your nagging wife would really lose her tongue? Humans, never satisfied, vindictive, always putting the pleasure of the moment above the needs of the future.’

  ‘You still like us, though, don’t you?’ said Rose.

  ‘Love ya,’ said the Doctor, giving her a grin. ‘But you do make a mess of things sometimes. Most of the time, in fact.’

  ‘So what happened next?’ Rose asked. ‘With the Earth, and the GENIEs and stuff?’

  The Doctor looked at her blankly. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

  Rose frowned. ‘What?’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry. What were we talking about?’

  ‘Doctor?’ Was he joking or what? ‘Is this, like, regeneration trauma again? Or are you having me on? Or has someone wished something?’

  The Doctor shrugged. ‘Sorry. No idea what you’re on about.’

  ‘The GENIEs destroying the world!’

  He looked at her, then at the GENIE cowering in its cardboard box.

  Back at Rose, back at the GENIE. Then he rapped his fist on the side of his head and shook it vigorously.

  ‘Sorry about that. Time Lord occupational hazard. Where were we?’ He took a deep breath. ‘Thanks to the GENIEs – no, that’s wrong, thanks to the people using the GENIEs – the Earth was on the brink of destruction. There could be no stability, because a wish could change anything. Pass a law to stop the wishing, and someone else’ll wish for it to go away. Fix the planet, and the next person’ll wish for it to be destroyed again. And the power that was being used up to grant all these wishes – you wouldn’t believe it.’

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  ‘I would,’ said Rose, remembering how the creature had sucked up Ursus’s body.

  ‘There had been some fail-safes built into the GENIEs. You can’t wish anyone dead or not to exist, for example – and that includes the GENIEs themselves. They thought about trying to wish for the GENIEs never to have been created in the first place, but they couldn’t do it

  ’cause it would create an almighty reality-imploding paradox – who would have granted the wish?’

  ‘I thought that!’ said Rose eagerly. ‘That’s what I said to, you know, our GENIE.’

  ‘Your GENIE indeed,’ came an indignant muttering from inside the box. But Rose could tell it was paying very close attention
to everything the Doctor was saying.

  ‘There were ways around that, though. Someone came up with a plan. They found the earliest GENIE they could – a GENIE created in May 2375.’

  Vanessa opened her mouth, but the Doctor held up a hand to shush her. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But it was the earliest one they had. And they knew the creature would need a tremendous amount of energy to do what needed to be done and so – they hooked it up to the sun.’

  ‘They did what?’ said Rose.

  But the Doctor didn’t pause in his tale. ‘And so they wished. . . they wished to return to the day that this GENIE had been created. In May 2375. And with the enormous amount of power at its disposal, the GENIE granted that wish.’

  ‘So all the later GENIEs would never have existed, just the one that granted the wish?’ said Rose.

  The Doctor nodded. ‘Yep. It’s still a bit of a reality cheat, because it’s impossible to change the nature of things unparadoxically, but it was better than the alternatives. But – as they knew would happen, as they’d planned all along – even a GENIE couldn’t cope with absorbing the power of the sun. In forcing the poor little creature to commit genocide on its whole kind, they were making it commit suicide too.

  Every single atom of that GENIE was burnt to a crisp – and the resultant fire destroyed the Bureau Tygon. The lab where the GENIEs were 153

  first created, every scrap of research, all ash and cinders.’

  There was a whimper from the box.

  ‘What day did you leave your home, Vanessa?’ the Doctor asked.

  ‘It was 17 April 2375,’ she said.

  ‘And that’s why your GENIE still exists,’ he told her. ‘Because it’s the very first.’

  ‘But if it takes me back home. . . ’ she said.

  The Doctor shrugged. ‘Then the Earth will be destroyed.’

  It took a moment for this to sink in. Rose had been trying to work things out, but there were so many twists and turns it wasn’t proving easy.

  ‘So this is the only GENIE in existence,’ she said. ‘Because they took their planet back to a time after it was made – they had to, because they needed the GENIE that was built later to grant the wish. But hang on a minute – if they wished themselves back to the beginning, then none of the bad planet-destroying stuff ever happened. So there’s no guarantee the Earth would be destroyed this time, even if they had a GENIE again.’

  ‘There’s human nature,’ said the Doctor, and Rose couldn’t argue with that. ‘I know what would happen if this GENIE went back. And it doesn’t happen. So I can’t let the GENIE go back. Time has to stay on the right track this time.’

  ‘But. . . if it never happened,’ she said, still getting things straight in her head, ‘if the planet never got overrun with GENIEs and wished to death, how do you know about it?’

  He grinned. ‘Time Lord super-powers.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, more or less. Time is, to put it in its most impressive and some might say poncy-sounding form, my domain. I can see things that once happened, even if they haven’t happened any more. Well, if I concentrate. The new reality – the real reality – keeps asserting itself, even with me. But the other time line leaves echoes, ripples, if you look hard enough. For example, here’s an interesting thing: guess where the GENIE of the future got its name.’

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  ‘The inventor was a big fan of pantos starring Australian soap stars in harem pants?’

  ‘Close enough. Arabian Nights fantasies and all that. There was a bit of an Arabic revival going on, everyone had Persian carpets and turbans were the latest fashion, right, Vanessa?’

  Vanessa nodded. ‘I’ve never been very fashionable,’ she said.

  ‘So, what do you think inspired the genies that inspired the GENIEs?’

  Rose got it. ‘GENIEs that had time-travelled their owners back to Arabian Nights days!’

  The Doctor tapped her on the nose. ‘Cigar for the lady.’

  Vanessa frowned. ‘But none of it ever happened, so the GENIEs never went back in time to become. . . genies.’

  ‘True,’ said the Doctor. ‘But the magical East – chock-full of mystics and wise men and suchlike who could sense things. Echoes and ripples. No one remembered that the genies were real – because they weren’t any more. But they left a trace.’

  ‘Blimey,’ said Rose. ‘Hey, are all stories based on disappearing time tracks, then?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she was told. ‘Elves, pixies, gnomes – the Moomins, Chorl-ton and the Wheelies, SpongeBob SquarePants – they all tried to invade you at some point. There was a galactic inquiry when Robocop came out. And as for the five famous justices of the future who disguised themselves as four children and a dog (although I think the dog was a mistake) in order to wipe out the crimes of kidnapping and smuggling for all eternity – well, I think they’re still trapped in a time loop somewhere with nothing but ginger beer and potted-meat sand-wiches to sustain them. Not to mention Miss Marple – Miss Martian, more like. Used her truth ray to get all those confessions until the Time Police tracked her down. Zapped her and the whole of St Mary Mead out of existence. Which is a shame, because there was a lovely little cafe in the high street where they did brilliant custard tarts.’

  ‘Is that true?’ Vanessa gasped.

  ‘No,’ said Rose. ‘You learn to ignore about one word in five he says.

  I mean, he was pretending to be Poirot earlier. He’s in that sort of 155

  mood.’

  The Doctor wrinkled up his nose at her.

  ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘what are we going to do now?’

  No one answered for a moment. Then Vanessa said, ‘I can’t go home.’

  ‘Why not?’ Rose asked.

  ‘You heard what the Doctor said! I’ll be condemning the Earth to death!’

  ‘Not you,’ said the Doctor. ‘The GENIE. It’s the GENIE who can’t go back.’

  ‘You mean I can –’ She broke off, looking at the little scaly creature in its dog-eared cardboard box. ‘But how? And surely the GENIE can’t stay here. Look at the trouble it’s caused already.’

  All the arrogance had drained out of the GENIE. ‘Please,’ it said sadly, ‘please make another wish. Wish for me to be erased from existence. If I serve no purpose. . . ’

  ‘But we can’t do that,’ Rose told it. ‘They built in a fail-safe or something. The Doctor said.’

  ‘And even if we could, we wouldn’t,’ said the Doctor briskly. ‘Serve no purpose? You bring about people’s greatest desires! All we have to do is find some people whose wishes are less. . . destructive.’

  ‘But how?’ said Vanessa again.

  Rose had caught on. ‘Same way we’re gonna get you home,’ she said. ‘In our handy time machine.’

  ‘And talking of time. . . ’ The Doctor looked up at the sky, judging the sun’s position. ‘What day is this?’

  ‘Er. . . Friday?’ said Rose, unsure.

  ‘I mean the date. How long was I stone for?’

  Rose thought. ‘It’s the day after Ursus you-knowed me.’

  ‘The 19th. The Quinquatrus. So that means I’m arriving in Rome about now.’ He frowned. ‘Have to be very careful. Could be catastrophic if I were to meet myself.’

  ‘Something catastrophic?’

  Rose commented.

  ‘That’ll make a

  change. Are we going back to Rome, then? Is that where the TARDIS

  is?’

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  ‘No. Well, yes. Both. For the purposes of not destroying the time lines, however, the TARDIS we want is just outside Gracilis’s villa. But we do have to get to Rome in the next, ooh, eight hours.’

  ‘Why?’

  He didn’t answer directly. ‘Do you have that phial of liquid?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ She got it out. It was still nearly full. ‘But we’ don’t need it any more, do we? Everyone’s sorted, and Ursus is dead.’

  “Everyone’s sorted”, are they? W
hat about Optatus, and all the other victims?’

  ‘But you said you’d done them.’

  The Doctor leaned forward, making his point. ‘I haven’t “done”

  them yet. In fact, I don’t even have that miracle cure yet.’ He indicated the small glass container. ‘I am given a nearly full phial of that liquid in about eight hours’ time.’

  That time Rose got it. ‘Oh. Right. How long will it take to get to Rome from here, then?’

  ‘About twenty hours.’

  ‘And if we don’t get there in eight, the whole of causality will im-plode or something.’

  ‘But,’ put in Vanessa, ‘didn’t you just say you had a time machine back at the villa?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Rose. ‘So we do.’

  The TARDIS materialised in an alcove at the back of the shrine of Fortuna. ‘Here we are,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s 19 March, AD 120, about six p.m.’

  Rose frowned. ‘But you’re going to be out there in a minute! You said it would be catastrophic if you met yourself.’

  ‘Oh, the planet-destroying blast would soon be forgotten as the universe rips itself apart when I don’t get given the phial in time,’ the Doctor told her. ‘But to avoid either possibility, I’m staying in here and you are going to go out there and pretend to be Fortuna.’ He grinned.

  ‘I think I must have originally got the idea from our friend here pretending to be Minerva. Only now I’ve given the idea to myself, which 157

  makes the whole thing far too complicated to worry about.’

  Rose peered at the scanner. ‘Why have some of the little models got blindfolds on? Are all her worshippers s’posed to be ugly or something?’

  ‘Blind fortune. She doesn’t judge who deserves her favours, she just throws them out at random. Like a bride chucking her bouquet.’

  The Doctor grimaced. ‘I caught a bouquet once and nearly ended up married to an elephant.’

  ‘Not a looker, then, was she?’ asked Rose.