Shaking his head the Doctor concluded, 'That's immaterial. If something is fiddling with Time in the past, the future can easily be changed. What is important is that it is where whoever is causing this trouble is...' As he said that word, he noted in the whiteness a rotating cube, jet black, moving towards the TARDIS.
'There they are...'
The cube filled the screen and as it did so, the entire room, as well as Turlough, vanished as if it had never been there.
~~~
Mirrors surrounded the Doctor on all four walls of the cube, and the floor and the ceiling. He looked at his reflection and the reflection of his reflection. He covered his head with his hands and dropped to his knees.
One wall began to rotate to allow the Doctor to exit. Gratefully, the Doctor obliged. He walked cautiously forwards into a long and winding gloomy corridor.
A voice suddenly bounced and echoed around the walls of the corridor. 'We are nowhere. No time. We exist outside of time. We are immune to the effects of the destruction of time.'
'Why have you done this to Time? Killed billions and billions of innocents?' growled the Doctor angrily.
'We have not, Time Lord. It is you, you have done this!' The voice cut to the bone, leaving a chill note in the air.
Staggered, the Doctor clutched the wall for support. 'What?' he exhorted breathlessly, 'How can that be?'
'You,' echoed the voices hollowly, 'have been a prisoner for a long time now. You are a renegade; a renegade Time Lord whose greatest fear is to find he has no time to travel in. You therefore fear the end of Time itself. We are beings who seek to show important figures in time their own minds, we take pleasure in making them the prisoner of their own fears. This is your own personal doomsday. You have merely been living your own fears and anxieties...'
Suddenly, the Time Lord found himself back in his TARDIS, lying in the main console room. The Time Rotor wheezed up and down. They were in flight.
'...people, Doctor, create their own doomsdays because of their fears and their hatred for others. That is why war occurs and planets die. You created your won doomsday and fell for the trap, of believing it! Your perception of reality is seriously flawed, as flawed as anyone else's in the galaxy who will all meet their doomsday, one day...one day...' The voice faded from his mind.
Rotating on its axis, the cube spun through the white void. Their mission over. The Doctor was now a complete personality seeing his own flaws, recognised that his own fear led to his own personal madness. Hopefully, his insanity would not catch up with him. If it did, the reality of his fear would come true...
~~~
'The Doomsday Clause is activated, Myra.'
The spectral image hovered before a winking jet black console. 'The Doctor is a fine agent for our cause, is he not?'
'Yes, Byra. But, he is sadly flawed. He had not attained the perfection required for the mission he has always been destined to fulfill. Now, however he has. When the time is right he shall usher in the End Time. His fear is his doomsday and in time he will allow that fear to overtake him. As soon as it occurs we shall know; link his mind to reality and the destruction will begin. He is marked! Then, we will rise to bring in the new order, new times, new universes. Perhaps this time, we'll get it right.'
Sadly an aged figure shuffled out of the gloomy room, shaking his head. 'Perhaps...'
They waited. Waited for the end and the beginning.
written by
DARREN FIELD
copyright 2011
artwork by
JONATHAN RODGERS
COLIN JOHN
copyright 2011