taxonomites | 1 [Holo] I know exactly where I am, it's everywhere else that's lost

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1 [Holo] I know exactly where I am, it's everywhere else that's lost

No sooner had the TARDIS come to a stop than the Doctor was throwing open the doors and dashing outside with a cheerful shout of "Come along, Ponds!", eager to see where they’d arrived this time. That was one of the fun things about connecting up the old randomiser every so often. Enter a few basic guidelines to avoid places that might end up with them all collapsing from something unfortunately terminal the moment the stepped outside or into the middle of a war zone (he’d been shot exiting the TARDIS once before, thank you very much, and had no desire to repeat the experience), then let the TARDIS do the rest. Guaranteed mystery the moment they opened the doors.

It was a little unfortunate then that it looked like 'mystery' in this case was...

"A white room with a sort of... thing on a pedestal. Not really what I'd call exciting but maybe there's something more out there. Like a ship or a space station or a..."

He trailed off, alerted by the silence even before he turned around to find no sign of the TARDIS or his companions. Just himself on a raised platform in an empty room in a place he wasn't familiar with. There was also something strange hanging overhead, and the Doctor frowned at it, his mind racing to fill in the blanks in what he knew.

"Some sort of teleporter maybe... I’ve been kidnapped?" The idea wasn't impossible, he knew for certain, since it had happened a few times before. But it had been a while since anyone had tried. "I suppose whoever’s behind this must be feeling pretty satisfied with themselves right now?"

His wrist felt odd, he realised. Well, he’d realised it earlier, in a vague sort of way, but it was only now that it persisted in feeling odd that he scratched at it and found what seemed to be a metal bracelet fused to his skin. "Did you go and tag me?" he asked the room incredulously. "Who goes around fusing jewellery onto people? ‘Oh, I know, he’d look so much better with a silver bracelet grafted to his skin’?"

The room remained silent, so obviously whoever had brought him here didn't feel like turning up to do the gloating bit. Which left him with the thing on the pedestal, the thing in the ceiling, and a door that proved to be locked when he tried opening it.

"If that's how you want to play it," he muttered, his hand delving into his pocket to produce his sonic screwdriver. It warbled reassuringly as he waved it in quick, apparently random patterns over the walls and door, but quickly escalated to a high-pitched shriek not unlike something in pain the moment he ventured too close to that thing hanging from the ceiling. Whatever it was didn’t want to be scanned in a hurry.

"Let's see what we've got then," the Doctor commented, extending the end of the sonic screwdriver with a practised flick of his wrist. Unfortunately, the answer turned out to be ‘not much of anything’, which really only left the device sitting on the pedestal. Snapping the sonic closed again and returning it to his pocket, the Time Lord wandered over to it curiously, taking his time looking it over before reaching out and picking it up. Whatever it was, it was active and had been recording and uploading information to somewhere the entire time.

"Hello," the Doctor said, shifting his hands on the tablet to get a better look at it. "Been having a good look at me, have you? Let’s see... text, holo seems to be active... visual, voice... Oh, maps! Yes, let’s start with that then. Always a handy thing to have, a map." His finger hovered over the icon for a moment as he paused in thought, his brow furrowing. "Not that I normally use them. But I’ve heard they’re handy if you get lost easily and don’t like the fun of finding your way back on your own. Personally I always think that’s the best bit, seeing where getting lost takes you, but I suppose some people might—Oh?"

Cutting himself off suddenly, the Doctor’s eyebrows shot up as the map loaded, revealing this to be a decent sized city apparently named Taxon. But the really interesting and surprising part was how the map displayed people’s names next to some of the glowing dots on the map. Or, more accurately, the surprising part was what some of those names were. "Martha Jones? Charlotte Pollard? Fitz Kreiner? That’s... No. It can’t be. It’s just not possible..."

For a moment there was the barest flicker of uncertainty in his face, before it was quickly hidden again and the Doctor addressed whatever unseen audience he had. "I think I need some answers."

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"Well, Winifred, actually, but everyone calls me Fred." Except for Wesley, but he was a special case.

She still smiled, even though she was a little disappointed. It'd been a one in a million chance that he'd remember her, anyway. "And it's all right. I think I knew another you, if that makes any sense. We worked on a hyper-drill together. I think the other you'd caught on that I like to tinker with things."

"Winifred..." His brow furrowed, the name ringing a bell. "Yes! Wesley mentioned you! Said you were talking about setting up a database?"

He grinned at her image. "Seems like you like to keep busy as well, wonderful! With people like you around, we should be able to get everyone out of here in no time!"

She smiled a little. "Oh, Wesley's talked to you!" She nodded, remembering the database discussion. "Yeah, something that could kind of keep track of everyone and what's been going on. Because we remember it, but we don't have it situated in any sort of way where we could detect patterns from it yet. And since we have so little contact with the 'aliens in charge', it might be the best thing to indicate why we're here and what their future plans with us might be."

That smile was like a breath of fresh air. She grinned back and nodded. "I'd like to think so! Although-" She bit her lip, reminding herself that things weren't quite so simple. "I've actually been outside this city, a little. It showed me that we have a lot to learn about this place, still. But somehow I have a feeling that's going to be a lot easier with you around."

"Yes," he said. "We spoke earlier. The database sounds like a good idea, better if you can get as many people as possible helping out to complete it. Find out who's been around the longest and what they know, if there's anything someone might know that doesn't fit or make sense as well. Sometimes people don't realise what's off until they get the chance to talk abut it with someone else."

He nodded at the next part, her reaction and the mentions from Wesley and others giving him a fair idea of when she would have gotten outside the city. "When the barrier dropped and the support systems went down," he guessed.

She nodded as he spoke about the database and collecting information. "It's got to be even more prone to happen here, with so many people coming in from different worlds and timelines. Sorting it out's going to be like untangling fishing line- more satisfying when we're done, though." She gave him a small smile.

The mention of the barrier dropping made her more somber again. "You've heard about that already, have you? Yes, that was when. I got to the other city, and- have you heard what was down there?"

"Well if you ask me, it seems like it's in good hands," he said with a faint smile. "But if you need an extra set, I can always help out. Lend a different point of view and maybe a bit of sonic?"

He'd probably take a look at it at some point anyway, just to see if there was anything he could do to help improve things or if there was anything they might not have noticed. But it was easier if those involved were happy to let him have a bit of a poke around, otherwise things could get difficult.

"Bits and pieces," he answered, recalling what he had heard of the barrier dropping. "Another city and its contents... But you know what I haven't heard much on? What do people think caused it?"

She looked down at her hands at the compliment, still not really knowing how to take one. But she did smile and looked back up, nodding. "I might just take you up on that, Doctor."

But yes, there were more serious things to think about. It was kind of nice, actually- she'd talked about it with Wesley, but hadn't really dared bring up her theories much otherwise. "The barrier dropping or the other city? Because I have thoughts on both. The barrier was...either a mistake or intentional. If it was intentional, then the other city was set there for us to find. I don't know if I believe that, though...why would they have put us through that? To make us more complacent about staying here? Because we already were, pretty much. I mean, sure, we were working on getting out, but there wasn't much progress for a long time, and so they didn't really have to do anything. But hey, it's obvious they don't always understand how people work, so anything's possible."

She adjusted her glasses, thinking about how to put it. "But assuming it wasn't intentional, the old city was put into place either at the same time or before us. There seemed to be more landmarks, which tells me there were more people there, and- oh, I hadn't even said anything about that. Before the life support failure, my friends with psychic abilities saw visions of people fighting each other. And everyone down there was dead and rotting. So if we hadn't been meant to find it, then...well, what were those people? Either recreations of some kind, or pulled from a slightly different timeline than ours. Did you- have you heard about the memories people sometimes get here?"

"Maybe," the Doctor began, drawing the word out a little, "they wanted to see what you'd do. It seems like this might be a form of experiment or something, in which case they might have been testing something... the question is, what? And why? No offence, but there's plenty of information on humans out there. You lot are everywhere, believe me, I know. And it's pretty easy to figure out what people would do when facing a city like the other one I've heard about, so either these aliens are a lot further removed from most of the rest of the universe, or there's something else we're missing."

He frowned in thought, trying to puzzle it out in his head as though just having the space to think about it would make it all obvious to him. But Fred's voice cut into his thoughts.

"What? Psychic visions? Haven't heard anything about those before. And it happened before the failure... You think it was to do with this other city?" He wasn't sure how that piece fit into what he already knew, but it seemed like it was reasonably important.

"I haven't heard about any memories either... But there's one other thing. If, as you say, you weren't meant to find the other city, when why was it still there? Why not clean up all the mess and get rid of it?"

She took a moment to answer, thinking about all he had said, and all the questions he'd brought up. "I think, maybe, that's what they had been doing- it seemed like they just closed it up and figured the whole thing would be entombed. You're right, though, it could've easily been an experiment. You'll find that we pretty much can't do anything about a glitch. Or the memories, either. But I do think very much that the visions had to do with the other city. Again, though, you can say that the aliens-in-charge were able to fake a vision...so far, their ability to manipulate the space their in- and us- seem...limitless."

She hated to admit that, but it was true. They hadn't found a real limit. She didn't want to believe that, which was why she was inclined to think the barriers dropping had been a mistake. She couldn't get rid of the possibility it was set up for them, though.

"As for the memories- well, it doesn't happen anywhere near as often now, but sometimes people will wake up with memories of things that happened back home...beyond when they had gotten picked up. So say someone had been taken here in 1995- sometimes they get memories of what would've happened to them if they hadn't been abducted from 1995 till 2000. I've never had it happen to me, but apparently it can be really convincing." And rather obviously false, but she didn't go as far to say that.

"What are they then, these glitches?" he asked. "You've mentioned them, but I haven't heard what they are."

The Doctor wasn't entirely focused on the answer, however. Captors with the apparently limitless ability to manipulate the city and everything within it was a little more immediately concerning, but these glitches were likely connected to that, so they were worth knowing about.

The memories sounded interesting, however. "Might be doing something with time... Or simply implanting something false. Still, worth keeping an eye out for, isn't it?"

She hadn't thought about time manipulation with the memories- it seemed to be far less likely, but spacetime manipulation seemed fairly common here. How would one get memories of what had happened at home if they hadn't been there, though? Maybe they were sent out and came back in at the same point?

That was the most frustrating part about trying to figure this out- literally anything was possible.

"Oh, the glitches," she said- rather suddenly, after realizing she'd just gotten lost in thought. "They can affect either one person or the whole town, and basically they make them act in a way that doesn't make sense for the duration. In some cases, some part of their lives have changed, sometimes they're completely different people. Once there was a month where people would break into song, like a musical." She'd somehow managed to get away without singing...much, that month. "I have no idea why they're called glitches. I haven't been able to hunt down who coined the term, quite yet."

"Glitches..." he said slowly. "It's a pity you don't know who came up with the idea. It's an odd choice, don't you think? Calling it a glitch rather than something else. I'd have liked to ask them why they picked that word."

The effects Fred mentioned were equally unusual. Widespread or limited, minor or extreme... The Doctor was beginning to realise that the city would be a bit more of a challenge than he might have initially given it credit for.

Well, at least he wouldn't get too bored in a hurry. He hoped.

"That's exactly what I've thought. So I've been asking about it whenever I get the chance," she replied. "I'll find out eventually. I'm pretty sure a few of the original kidnappees are still here. So trying to put together all of that info will accomplish a few different things, hopefully."

She shrugged, still smiling a little. She hoped this would at least feel like some progress- if nothing else, they'd know a little more about the people here. "You'll let me know what you come up with, right? Don't go trying to do it all on your own now," she added, (mostly) jokingly. He seemed different from the first Doctor she laid eyes on, but she didn't want him to go off and try something like that bomb bluff.

"Original kidnappees..." he mused. "How long have they been here then, do you know? Is this all relatively new or... a bit more long term?"

He wasn't sure which answer he was hoping for there. Either one could work out well for different reasons. If the city was new, then maybe those in charge of it hadn't had time to make it as escape-proof as people thought - though by all the accounts so far, they'd done a pretty good job there. But if it had been around for a while, then there was the chance of their captors growing complacent with no one managing to upset things, or parts wearing down to make messing around with things he shouldn't a bit easier...

"Hmmm?" he blinked and smiled reassuringly at her. "Oh, of course I'll let you know. Sooner or later... I like to make sure I'm mostly right before I get too carried away in things."

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1 [Holo] I know exactly where I am, it's everywhere else that's lost

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