by Oli Smith
Cautiously, Rory stood up and softly padded along the gantry to try and get a view of Daryl’s screen. Amy clattered after him in her boots.
‘Can you hear that?’ she whispered.
‘Yeah, how about you start wearing trainers next time we leave the TARDIS?’
‘No, no, not that. Listen!’
Rory pricked up his ears.
At this distance the noise was faint. But as he listened, Rory was sure he could hear the sound of a telephone ringing.
CHAPTER 12
New Places
This side of Parallife was very different to the one they had been on before. The hand of the Architects could be seen wherever the Doctor and Blondie looked. Little remained of the old world. Even the more familiar buildings and people had been restyled almost beyond recognition. Vast, twisting glass landscapes stretched in all directions, and even in the smaller settlements the homes and other constructions were floating in the air, attached to the layered surface by neon strands.
But it was the music that stood out most to the Doctor. Instead of the realistic sound samples of the forest, where rustling leaves and distant birdsong had been the only soundtrack to their journey – here even their footsteps produced soft, musical notes. When the buildings swayed, it was in time to a soft bass rhythm rather than the sound of any wind. The citizens that lived here had hidden their human features beneath rippling pixel-suits that faded from colour to colour in time to the beat. The colours displayed their emotions in a way that made language almost unnecessary. Everything was transmitting information, and for the Doctor – who was used to not judging by appearances – the honesty of the notes and colours was astonishing.
‘They make me look almost human, don’t they?’ Blondie commented to him. And it was true. Before, her silver hair and artificial clothing had stood out amongst the realistic outfits in Tutorial, and the flawless texture of her skin was at odds with the rough, matted fur of the animals they had ridden. Here she was the most familiar sight that the Doctor could see.
‘Everything is so open. No one, nothing, has anything to hide. And they couldn’t hide it if they wanted to,’ he said.
‘And what would they want to hide? How could hiding what they feel help a person to be happy?’
They had reached the nearest settlement by now. It was only a small cluster of buildings. The Doctor would have called it a village if the word didn’t seem so ridiculous here. They leapt up its levels, to a network of roads that blossomed from the centre of the houses and arced upwards into the sky.
Blondie conjured a guiding spell. She created a small ball of light in her hand and threw it up above their heads. It hovered there for a minute until Blondie spoke, loudly and clearly. ‘The Architects’ Guild, please.’ Then it zipped off towards the horizon. It left a frozen streak of lightning behind it that followed one of the larger roads from the village.
The road was transparent and almost invisible when the pair moved to step onto it. But as they did so, their shadows seemed to become solid beneath them, creating a platform for them to stand on. The Doctor wobbled uncertainly for a moment, and Blondie grabbed his arm to steady him as their shadows began to move.
They raced across the landscape, their path joining a highway a few miles ahead. Around them the world twisted and looped, although the Doctor couldn’t be sure if it was the world turning or the highway.
‘How far now?’ the Doctor shouted, before realising that there was no wind anymore to drown out his words. ‘I mean, how far now?’ he said again, more quietly. He checked his watch. ‘We might have outrun the system wipe so far, but soon there’ll be nowhere to run to.’
‘If new code is the only protection against the darkness, then the Guild is our last hope for survival,’ Blondie replied.
CHAPTER 13
The Guild
The Architects’ Guild was huge. Great emerald spires seemed to touch the sky and turned the light around it to a deep green that swathed the landscape in a dusky glow. Its shape stretched downwards just as far, its lowest spire connecting to the shimmering grid of the city below. It looked huge. But only after another fifteen minutes of travel, with the spires looming bigger and bigger on the horizon, did the Doctor realise just how huge it really was.
The highway ended in the exact centre of the structure, at its widest point. The Doctor and Blondie stepped out onto a wide glass rim that circled the Guild and attached to a large number of other roads and walkways.
The Doctor knelt down to stare at the city below, touching his hand against the glass. The outlines of its grids and streets, buildings and vehicles, shone brightly in the darkness of the deep green sky.
‘Interesting,’ said the Doctor.
‘What is?’ Blondie leaned down beside him.
‘Probably nothing.’ He leapt to his feet. ‘But worth remembering.’
The Doctor strode over to one of the main entrances to the Guild, where two men were standing either side. He smoothed over his hair with a hand and fiddled with his shirt. He fastened the cuffs with ease and straightened his bow tie. Finally, once he considered himself presentable, he offered a hand to one of the men.
‘Hello, I’m the Doctor,’ he grinned. ‘Now if you’d just let me through to see your Chief Architect, then I might be able to save your world from total destruction.’
The men looked at each other, then back to the Doctor.
‘Well, don’t tell us,’ said one.
‘Just walk right in and do it. We aren’t going to stop you,’ said the other.
The Doctor looked confused. ‘But, you’re guards aren’t you?’
‘Guards?!’ One of the men looked at him as if he were mad. ‘What would anyone need a guard for?’
Blondie strode past the Doctor and through the doors, pretending she wasn’t with him.
The Doctor shifted his weight from foot to foot, embarrassed, then hurried in after her.
‘For a man so obsessed with peaceful solutions, you expect an awful lot of violence don’t you?’
‘I just thought, you know . . .’
‘I don’t know. Players don’t kill players, what kind of world do you think we live in?’
The Doctor was silent.
The main hall stretched away before them. It was filled with columns that curved out of the floor and extended both above and below the glass floor into the furthest reaches of the Guild. A menu appeared in the air before Blondie with a collection of small, flat rectangles of varying colours. Each one was labelled with a department and room number. She jabbed a finger at a small white box and another lightning streak zipped across the floor and up one of the columns.
‘This way,’ she said, striding forward.
They walked up the curve of the floor until they were at right angles to where they had just been standing, then carried on upwards.
The Doctor ducked to avoid bumping heads with a citizen walking upside down on a nearby column. As they walked, the building narrowed and the spires split off in all directions. Eventually their spire was all that was left, and the tunnel that surrounded them drew so close that the Doctor had to hunch to continue.
Finally the column stopped and Blondie helped the Doctor step onto its peak. She pointed at another box hanging in the air, and the pillar began to extend. It carried them slowly upwards through another glass floor until they were standing in the office of the Chief Architect.
CHAPTER 14
The Architect
The office was large and sprawling and the walls seemed to be covered in a patchwork of red shapes that made it hard to tell just how large the room was. In the centre of the room, the Chief Architect was playing a piano. His fingers danced over the keys and the notes rang out in the silence – each one changing the shade of a shape on the wall. Then the Architect saw the Doctor and Blondie standing in front of him and raised his hands from the keyboard. Slowly, the colours faded. The deep reds washed away to white and even the piano seemed to melt into an orange skeleton
before folding itself into the floor.
‘Doctor,’ he said quietly, a soft smile on his face. ‘I’ve heard all about you.’
The Doctor swayed on his heels. ‘I hope it was good things,’ he replied, offering his hand for the Architect to shake.
‘Of course,’ said the Architect. He was young, with white hair that matched his shirt and grey trousers that matched his shoes. But even though he was small, his power could be felt in every aspect of his office, bubbling away beneath the surface.
‘I’m sorry if this is rude,’ the Doctor frowned for a moment, ‘but aren’t you a little young to be the Chief Architect?’
The Architect raised his eyebrows. ‘Our age isn’t revealed in our faces, Doctor, we have so many other ways of showing our wisdom.’ He leaned forward. ‘But I don’t think I’m the only person in this room who is older than he looks, am I?’
The Doctor grinned. ‘You’re good. Very good.’
The Architect shrugged. ‘I know.’
Blondie stepped forward. When she spoke her words were filled with a respect that the Doctor hadn’t seen from her before. ‘Can you help us, sir?’
The Architect looked away. He moved his fingers ever-so-slightly and suddenly the walls of the room fell away to reveal the landscape beyond. In the far distance, the familiar darkness was approaching, a black smudge in the green sky. ‘I don’t know,’ he said sadly. ‘Even I don’t have the power to hold back the destruction of our world.’
Blondie reached out her hand to grab the Doctor’s. ‘The Doctor has a plan.’
The Doctor shifted on his feet for a moment. ‘Sort of.’
Blondie stared at him.
‘What?’ said the Doctor, defensively, ‘I never said I could stop the system wipe – the best I can do is to buy us some time.’
‘But you said –’ Blondie looked shocked.
‘What do you need, Doctor?’ the Architect interrupted.
The Doctor leaned forward. ‘I need you to make me something. I’m only a new player. I don’t have the levels or the experience for, well, anything really. But you, you know the system inside out; you can find shortcuts and program new codes. Give me the power to change the objects in this world and I promise I will do everything I can to save it.’
The Architect nodded. ‘You are a brave man, Doctor. We have spent so long living in peace that some of us have forgotten how to fight. Except you.’ He looked at Blondie. ‘It is good to see you happy again.’
‘I’m not happy, I’m terrified,’ said Blondie.
‘With you, I think it’s hard to tell the difference.’
A smile tugged at the corners of Blondie’s mouth, but the Doctor clapped his hands together before she could reply. ‘Right!’ he declared. ‘Let’s get started!’
CHAPTER 15
Cheat
The Doctor’s explanation had taken nearly half an hour to complete. The air around the Chief Architect had become filled with a rainbow of plans, drawings and lists of abilities that the Doctor required. Now the Doctor and Blondie had retreated to the far corner of the office, where the Architect had conjured up a small table and two armchairs to keep them out of his way while he began to create.
The Doctor sipped a small cup of what looked like tea, but it tasted of nothing and smelled of even less.
‘Why do you drink that?’ Blondie asked him. She’d brought her sword onto her lap and was polishing it vigorously.
‘In the real world this would smell of something,’ the Doctor replied mournfully. ‘Something comforting and calming.’
‘Smell?’
‘Obviously two senses were missed out when this virtual world was created.’
Blondie frowned. ‘You mean there are more than three?’
The Doctor nodded. ‘There are five, usually, sometimes more.’
Blondie laughed. ‘That seems far too many to keep track of. No wonder the humans have never really explored what they could do with sight or sound. They must be in a constant state of confusion.’
‘You know, I think you must be right.’ The Doctor smiled and took another sip of his flavourless drink.
Blondie looked over to where the Architect was standing in a whirlwind of computer code. His hands darted around the swirling fragments, pulling lines from the air and mixing them with others. Textures and sounds were created and then pulled into the central shape. Others were dismissed with a wave of the Architect’s hand, crumbling into numbers on the floor.
Sparks were flying as the object neared completion and the office became a collage of colours – blues and greens, reds and oranges. They merged into rainbows and then a pure white light. Eventually, the Architect was finished.
The Doctor applauded loudly as he got to his feet to meet the man. Blondie blinked, surprised at how quickly the all-powerful wizard she had seen while he worked had returned to the mild young man they had first met.
‘Stunning,’ was all the Doctor could say when he came face to face with the Chief Architect.
The Architect bowed his head. ‘We all have things we’re good at, Doctor. My skills are just particularly flashy.’
‘Did you manage it?’ asked the Doctor.
‘Yes.’
The Architect held out his hands and presented the Doctor with his request. ‘It’s a clever design,’ he commented, ‘capable of tampering with even the most complicated of codes. If these weren’t desperate times, then I would have refused to grant such an outrageous request. I shudder to think what would happen if this fell into the wrong hands.’
‘Don’t you worry about that.’ The Doctor grasped the item firmly. ‘I’m very protective of my sonic screwdriver.’
‘Your what?’ Blondie peered over his shoulder.
‘Sonic screwdriver.’ The Doctor flourished the device triumphantly. He thumbed a catch and the handle snapped open to reveal a glowing green crystal. He grinned slyly. ‘My all-purpose tampering device.’
‘What’s sonic about it?’
‘Nothing,’ the Architect wiped his hands with a handkerchief, then made it vanish. ‘It’s a cheat code actually – but its appearance was based on the Doctor’s description. It allows him to tamper with the computer code that makes up our world; to change it and exaggerate it. He can make it do whatever he likes. But without something for it to tamper with, it’s virtually useless.’
‘That’s what I like about it. It’s a tool not a weapon. Tools make other things work better.’
‘How appropriate for a man named Doctor,’ said the Architect.
‘So, what’s the plan?’ asked Blondie.
‘First I need to test a theory.’ The Doctor turned to her. ‘Your navigation thing, the spell that showed us the way to the Architects’ Guild. It can show you the route to anywhere in Parallife, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Which means that somewhere in that spell is a world map?’
‘I guess so.’
The Doctor flicked on the sonic screwdriver. ‘Then let’s bring it up.’
Blondie knew what to do. She flexed her hands, summoning the white ball of lightning once again. But before she could cast it into the air, the Doctor’s screwdriver let out a high-pitched whir.
The ball expanded and shifted, transforming into a metre wide, three-dimensional shape full of kinks and planes and smooth curves.
The Doctor leaned forward to examine it and his nose almost touched the shimmering image. ‘So this is what Parallife looks like,’ he murmured. ‘But it didn’t always look like this, did it?’
‘No. We Architects have adjusted the landscape, changing it to suit the needs of the citizens in each area. The largest towers are easier to build if the world is flat, whereas others prefer a traditional, curved horizon.’
‘Yeah.’ The Doctor nodded. ‘That sounds about right. But what happens if I hammer out the kinks?’ He activated the sonic screwdriver again, and gradually the shape began to shift once more – smoothing it out until it became a perfect spher
e. ‘There we go,’ he smiled, ‘the original globe.’
Blondie shrugged. ‘So it’s more round, what’s the big deal?’
The Doctor glanced over his shoulder. ‘Nothing, to you. But what you don’t know is that the human world outside of Parallife is also a sphere.’ He pointed at the glowing outlines of Parallife’s continents. ‘And although the Architects have changed your world dramatically since the players left, the basic shapes of the digital continents are the same. Parallife is an almost exact copy of planet Earth!’
He jammed his screwdriver into the image and immediately it grew, zooming into a particular city. ‘I thought I recognized the road layouts beneath the Guild – we’re in Atlanta!’
‘Atlanta?’
‘That’s the Earth-name for it; it’s a city in America.’
‘America?’
The Doctor sighed. He was getting nowhere fast. ‘Okay, back to basics,’ he said, straightening up. ‘Parallife is a copy of Earth, right?’
Blondie and the Architect both nodded.
‘And the system wipe is being caused by something in the real world – right? A computer or an artificial intelligence or something.’ They nodded again.
‘So, if we can find the centre of the system wipe in Parallife, then that will tell us the Earth-location of the computer that’s causing it. We can turn it off!’
‘But even if we found out where that was, how would we reach it, Doctor?’ said the Architect. ‘None of us exist in the outside world.’
‘Leave that to me,’ said the Doctor. He turned to Blondie. ‘So, this spell of yours, it creates a path to whatever location you choose?’
‘I just need to say the word,’ she replied.
‘And if that location’s been wiped then it won’t be able to give you directions to it, yes?’
‘I guess not, I’ve not tried.’
The Doctor smiled. ‘Well, ask it now. Ask it to give you directions to everywhere!’